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Rhythm & Hues
Established Date: Jan. 1, 1987
Deceased Date: Feb. 10, 2013
- All
- visual effects
- co-founder
- pioneer
- CAPS
- PDI/DreamWorks
- PDI
- Disney
- DreamWorks
- Rhythm & Hues
- CAFE
-
Academy Award winning visual effects and animation production studio founded in 1987. While working at Robert Abel’s company, Randy Roberts suggested to John Hughes that they spin off a new company. Once the venture got going (as six people in John’s living room with one SGI) Randy actually ended up Directing independently for a few years, ultimately joining R&H in 1993. Founded in a former dental office in Santa Monica by John Hughes, Charles Gibson, Pauline Ts'o, Keith Goldfarb, Frank Wuts and Cliff Boule all from Robert Abel. Other early employees included Larry Weinberg and Peter Farson (from Digital Productions) and Kathy White (Abel)
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Life After Pi (Documentary) -
Their very first job (April 23, 1987) was a film project to realize the MGM/UA logo for that studio. This was especially unusual at a time when virtually all CG production work was for broadcast television. The following years were spent creating many different commercial and logo projects, starting with their second job for a New Zealand station.
in the beginning -
The year 1990 saw some incredible breakthrough work for the feature film Flight of the Intruder. Remember that, at the time, The Abyss had just come out a year before and T2 was still a year away (1991). R&H created more than 30 full-daylight shots of photo-realistic aircraft, cluster bombs, and smoke[md]all with proprietary software. This was truly breakthrough work that unfortunately was not as recognized as it should have been because the film itself did poorly.
Flight of the Intruder -
With four out of the six original employees being code writers, the in-house software effort had begun from day one. Eventually, four main components were written: animation, modeling, rendering, and compositing. Before all the code was production-ready, however, Wavefront software was used based on an agreement John had made earlier with the company started by his former co-worker Bill Kovaks. While working at Bob Abel's on and off from 1976 to 1987, John had his own company called Motion Control …
early software code -
Rhythm & Hues' work on Babe won an Academy Award for best Visual Effects. VFX Supervised by Scott Anderson and VFX Produced by Nancy St. John.
Academy Award for Babe -
In March of 1999, R&H bought the visual effects CG company VIFX (which was located just two blocks away in Hollywood) from Fox, which had also just recently acquired the company and briefly merged it with Blue Sky. VIFX's founder and President Richard Hollander's new position is as head of the film effects group, bringing some 80 of VIFX's employees with the purchase.
acquiring VIFX -
From Digital Productions - Melinda Tidwell, Aung Min, Kevin Barnhill; From Robert Abel - Neil Richmond; From Cranston Csuri - Jeanie Cunningham; From ???: Wendy Elwell
Early employees -
VIFX -
John Hughes -
Mark Wilkins
in the beginning
Their very first job (April 23, 1987) was a film project to realize the MGM/UA logo for that studio. This was especially unusual at a time when virtually all CG production work was for broadcast television. The following years were spent creating many different commercial and logo projects, starting with their second job for a New Zealand station.
Flight of the Intruder
The year 1990 saw some incredible breakthrough work for the feature film Flight of the Intruder. Remember that, at the time, The Abyss had just come out a year before and T2 was still a year away (1991). R&H created more than 30 full-daylight shots of photo-realistic aircraft, cluster bombs, and smoke[md]all with proprietary software. This was truly breakthrough work that unfortunately was not as recognized as it should have been because the film itself did poorly.
early software code
With four out of the six original employees being code writers, the in-house software effort had begun from day one. Eventually, four main components were written: animation, modeling, rendering, and compositing. Before all the code was production-ready, however, Wavefront software was used based on an agreement John had made earlier with the company started by his former co-worker Bill Kovaks. While working at Bob Abel's on and off from 1976 to 1987, John had his own company called Motion Control Systems (MCS) with partner Jim Keating. Jim, at that time, wrote the model component of the Wavefront code. In exchange for sole rights to that software, Wavefront gave a number of licences to John's new company, R&H. Bill Kovacs actually wrote his preview code while consulting for John's earlier MCS company, but he retained sole ownership of that software for himself.
Academy Award for Babe
Rhythm & Hues' work on Babe won an Academy Award for best Visual Effects. VFX Supervised by Scott Anderson and VFX Produced by Nancy St. John.
acquiring VIFX
In March of 1999, R&H bought the visual effects CG company VIFX (which was located just two blocks away in Hollywood) from Fox, which had also just recently acquired the company and briefly merged it with Blue Sky. VIFX's founder and President Richard Hollander's new position is as head of the film effects group, bringing some 80 of VIFX's employees with the purchase.
Early employees
From Digital Productions - Melinda Tidwell, Aung Min, Kevin Barnhill; From Robert Abel - Neil Richmond; From Cranston Csuri - Jeanie Cunningham; From ???: Wendy Elwell
Academy Award winning visual effects and animation production studio founded in 1987. While working at Robert Abel’s company, Randy Roberts suggested to John Hughes that they spin off a new company. Once the venture got going (as six people in John’s living room with one SGI) Randy actually ended up Directing independently for a few years, ultimately joining R&H in 1993. Founded in a former dental office in Santa Monica by John Hughes, Charles Gibson, Pauline Ts'o, Keith Goldfarb, Frank Wuts and Cliff Boule all from Robert Abel. Other early employees included Larry Weinberg and Peter Farson (from Digital Productions) and Kathy White (Abel)