The Orphanage (company)
The Orphanage was a visual effects studio located in California. It had offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco. It was co-founded in 1999 by Stu Maschwitz, Jonathan Rothbart and Scott Stewart, who all previously worked at Industrial Light & Magic. Scott Kirsner at Hollywood Reporter[1] interviewed a couple of the founders and writes about the company and its plans. Stu Maschwitz created the Magic Bullet software which gives video a film look and wrote a book about guerrilla filmmaking called The DV Rebel's Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap.
The Orphanage was known for its work on both commercials and features. The company recently launched Orphanage Animation Studios[1] which was headed up by Genndy Tartakovsky and was due to make their film debut with the ill-fated Power of the Dark Crystal.
The Orphanage did approximately 640 shots for the "That Yellow Bastard" section of Sin City (2005).[2] as well as three other films with Robert Rodriguez, Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D and the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez co-directed double feature Grindhouse.
The company has worked on a number of Hollywood blockbusters including Superman Returns, Night at the Museum, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest & At World's End and the Korean blockbuster The Host. They created the Head-up display (HUD) for the hi-tech suit of armour in the Marvel Studios production of Iron Man, for which their work was nominated for a 2008 VES Award (for Best Compositing).
They have also created commercials and a handful of Super Bowl spots for clients as varied as Comcast, Toshiba, HP, Benadryl, Nicoderm and several award-winning spots for Sony PlayStation's Ratchet & Clank.
On February 4, 2009 the company announced it was suspending operations indefinitely, after 10 years in the business. The announcement was made by company co-founders Stu Maschwitz, Scott Stewart and Jonathan Rothbart, and announced on Mr. Maschwitz's blog.[3] No immediate notice was posted on the company's website. Although the announcement gave no reason for the closing, bloggers attributed the closing to general economic conditions.[4][5]
