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BITS & PIECES www.postmagazine.com 4 POST MAY/JUNE 2020 TECHNICOLOR MERGES VFX STUDIOS MILL FILM & MR. X LOS ANGELES — Technicolor (www.technicolor. com) has announced the merger of Mr. X and Mill Film under the Mr. X (www.mrxfx.com) name. The move brings together the expertise and creativity of both brands into a stronger united entity. Mr. X now becomes a VFX studio crossing four time zones, span- ning Canada, the United States, Australia and India. The merger is a direct and necessary response to the current COVID-19 crisis. The newly combined and expanded studio will service clients across both features and episodic. Laura Fitzpatrick, MD of Mill Film, will move into a managing director role at Mr. X, based in Montreal, with Dennis Berardi, founder of Mr. X, assuming the position of creative director for the studio. "As the entertainment landscape has continued to evolve, both studios were naturally overlapping into each other's spaces," explains Berardi. "Merging both brands allows us to build the perfect team for each and every client." With 20 years in the business, Mr. X has won mul- tiple awards, including VES and Canadian Screen awards, as well as garnered BAFTA, Satellite and Critics Choice award nominations. Mr. X has built a number of collaborative partnerships with notable directors, such as Guillermo Del Toro and Paul W.S. Anderson. The studio is known for bringing the vi- sion of filmmakers to life across projects. Its credits include the Academy Award winning The Shape Of Water (Fox Searchlight) and Roma (Netflix), as well as the blockbuster Shazam! (Warner Bros.). Mill Film has delivered legacy projects such as Gladiator (Universal), which won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in 2001, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Warner Bros.), plus more recent releases such as Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (Disney) and Dora and the Lost City of Gold (Paramount). "Our aim is to partner with clients to realize their ideas and exceed visual expectations," says Fitzpatrick. "With our merged brand we can pitch global expertise in all creative areas: original design and art direction, on-set supervision, environment cre- ation, FX simulations, creature and character work." The combined legacy of both studios serves as the foundation for Mr. X going forward. The expan- sion of the studio's talent pool paves the way for the team to share knowledge and best practices for de- livering projects of all genres, formats and mediums. All facilities remain open in Toronto, Montreal, Los Angeles, Adelaide and Bangalore. The merger will be effectively immediately, with a period of transi- tion for employees. This does not impact The Mill, which continues to operate as a separate entity. HULA POST SUPPORTS DISNEY+'S PROP CULTURE BURBANK, CA — Hula Post (http://hulapost.com) provided editorial systems for Prop Culture, a new Disney+ series that debuted on May 1st. The eight-episode series is the brainchild of Dan Lanigan, who also serves as host. Lanigan is one of the world's foremost cinematic prop collectors, and came up with the idea for a show that explores several of Disney's iconic films, and looks at how props helped to shape and create some of their magical moments. The movies featured in the series include Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl, Mary Poppins, Tron, The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Muppet Movie, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe and Honey, I Shrunk The Kids. Hula Post, under the guidance of senior Avid technician James Tejeda, set up seven Avid editing systems for six editors and two assistants. To meet the demands of all the media involved, Tejeda's team set up 40TBs of storage on an Avid NEXIS NAS and LT0-7 drive. To complete the setup, Hula's team installed four producer stations and a DIT station, all on-site at the show's post production of- fice near Disney Studios in Burbank. The team was headed up by line producer Judson Jackson, who was responsible for both production and post. "We decided to keep everything in-house and do the transcoding ourselves," Jackson explains, "which is different than most productions and saved us time and money." After the on-set DIT did his color correction to the raw footage, it was brought directly over to the post team on hard drives, rather than to a traditional post facility for transcoding. Once there, the footage was put through a two-copy process, which entailed copying the original footage over to a NAS, and at the same time, creating a backup on LTOs. "We were able to do this because Hula Post had the ability to provide the critical piece we needed for our production," notes Jackson. "The whole process went smoothly without any issues thanks to the skill and technical expertise of everyone involved," adds Tejeda. The Prop Culture team of editors included lead editor Ben Stritz, Will Simpson, Bobby Balog, Ben Bolton and Casey Lee. Assistant editors included Maureen Marchetti and David Scott. Hula Post's team of technicians also included Dennis Bethke, Joel Ouano, Abraxas Hicks and Juan Ramirez. Props featured include those from Disney's Mary Poppins.