Having finished the vfx for the Matrix trilogy, ESC looks to the future. Courtesy of ESC Entertainment. All Matrix Revolutions images © 2003 Warner Bros. Ent. — U.S., Canada, Bahamas & Bermuda. © 2003 Village Roadshow Films (BVI) Ltd — all other territories (all rights reserved used by permission), unless otherwise noted.

In 2001, a small group of digital artists, engineers and managers teamed with a pair of visionary directors to create a new kind of visual effects organization in Alameda, California. One blockbuster franchise later, armed with more than 800 jaw-dropping shots, ESC Entertainment prepares to take on the big guns of the visual effects industry as Warner Bros.’ non-exclusive subsidiary.

Too often, profiles of successful companies smack of the old Steve Martin bit on how to become a millionaire (“First,” says Martin, “get a million dollars…”). One might take a similar view of ESC. “Well, sure,” you say, “if I had Joel Silver running interference with the suits, the Wachowski brothers dreaming up fiendishly complex visual worlds, and checks with lots of zeroes to spend on talent and technology I could have come up with an organization to create awesome effects.”

If you look at what really happened, you might think differently.

Improving on the groundbreaking “Bullet Time” effects work on The Matrix in two ambitious sequels would have given pause to even an A-list effects studio, much less one existing solely in the minds of its founders. Through a variety of events chronicled extensively in the trade and popular media, ESC found itself in the challenging position of clearing the technical and creative bar raised in the first movie. But this time with no facility, equipment or staff.

The rest is now history. ESC created some of the most memorable action sequences in recent movie memory, including the “Burly Brawl,” “Freeway Chase” and “Trinity Falls” in Matrix Reloaded and “The Siege” and numerous Neo/Smith slugfests in Matrix Revolutions.

ESC president Tom Davila has grown the company from a small upstart to a top competitve vfx house.

But the most remarkable thing about the ESC story — and its legacy to future teams of visual effects practitioners — is that ESC evolved as an organization while it was researching and developing new technologies, building staff, facilities and production pipelines and delivering shots. Seven team members started ESC: Kim Libreri, Janet Yale, Tom Settle, Dan Piponi, George Borshukov and Paul Ryan.

Organizations reflect the life and times of their founders — ESC is no exception. In many ways the immense scope of the Wachowskis’ world demanded an organization dedicated to it. And, yes, luck (along with box office clout) had a lot to do with ESC’s founding, growth and creative and technical success. If the first film had tanked, ESC might still be a twinkle in the eye of its founding team (and this article certainly would never have been written).

But sometimes things just come together in a perfect storm of drive, talent, technology and audience appetite. ESC Entertainment is the result of this remarkable confluence of events. Indeed, one could argue that ESC as a company, along with the films themselves, is an artifact of the creative vision of the Wachowski brothers.

ESC’s basic business model is simple: providing cutting-edge visual effects for major studio releases at a reasonable profit. Though not strictly Warner Bros.’ in-house visual effects provider, the company nonetheless secured lead roles in the studio’s upcoming Catwoman and Constantine, and is a leading vfx contender for the Superman remake too. Plus, ESC has been actively soliciting work on such non-Warner Bros. projects as The Ladykillers, helmed by another famous pair of sibling filmmakers — the Coen brothers.

ESC president Tom Davila and ESC visual effects supervisor Libreri reviewed some of the major lessons ESC learned from its Matrix experience and how it plans to respond to challenges of its post-Matrix future.

First, ESC learned that early and constant collaboration with directors is critical to the success of the project. As Libreri puts it “Andy and Larry [Wachowski] knew exactly what they wanted. They weren’t afraid of upsetting the status quo even if that meant chucking traditional departmental boundaries. We had worked with them on the first movie. We wanted to make the best visual movie we could do. And the way we did that was having everybody work closely with visual effects.” This close early contact — especially in set construction, lighting, camera and stunts — helped streamline production by making sure that effort and expense was spent only creating the parts of Matrix world audiences would see.

Second, ESC learned to focus on technologies to help directors realize their vision of “photoreal” environments and characters (especially virtual humans). Adds Libreri: “ESC’s not afraid to deploy hard core technologies in pursuit of realistic images.” ESC’s advances in large-scale motion capture, high-dynamic range imaging, facial animation, machine vision, image-based lighting and rendering and virtual cinematography are examples of this technical focus.