CafeFX kicked off its animation work with Pan's Labyrinth in 2006. © Warner Bros. Pictures. Courtesy of CafeFX.

BD: So where are you headed?

JB: That's interesting. Right now, I'd say it's a little slower than normal. A lot of the studios are holding off on pushing projects through because of the potential SAG strike in June. We're lucky to have good board flow in bidding, and we just delivered Speed Racer last week.

BD: What can you tell us about that?

JB: We're not allowed to say anything, other than we did a sequence of about 80-100 shots. And we recently wrapped up work on The Happening, which is the M. Night [Shyamalan] movie.

BD: How was that?

JB: That turned out cool.

BD: Can you talk about that at all?

JB: Not yet. It was mostly a lot of compositing job.

BD: Let's talk about John Adams and Shine a Light.

JB: John Adams was a big project for us. We worked with [Visual Effects Supervisor] Erik Henry on that. We've worked with Erik on six or seven projects over the years, so he's like family. We did about 400 shots. It was all types of work -- a lot of matte painting, set extensions. HBO was very happy with the work and the show itself has been very successful. The Shine a Light project was done mostly out of our south office in Santa Monica. We built some CG Manhattan that a virtual camera flies over at the close of the film. Mr. Scorsese was happy, so we're happy. We're working on another film with him, but I'm not allowed to discuss that.

BD: Any new projects coming out your in-house feature production division, Sententia Entertainment.

JB: We have a few scripts that we're developing. One's a non-mainstream CG feature. Not Toy Story -- it's a little darker. And we have a comedy project and a low-budget sci-fi project that we're developing that are all live action. We've optioned a book as well with another production company, but we haven't started on the script.

BD: Can you tell us more about the CG project?

JB: It's a futuristic project that has to do with nanotechnology taking over the world.

BD: Sounds like the potential for a lot of ambitious CG.

JB: Yeah, we like it that way.