The Orphanage is a visual effects studio located in California. It has offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Vancouver. It was co-founded in 1999 by Stu Maschwitz, Jonathan Rothbart and Scott Stewart, who all previously worked at Industrial Light and Magic. Scott Kirsner at Hollywood Reporter interviewed a couple of the founders and writes about the company and its future 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 is known for its work on both commercials and features. The company recently launched Orphanage Animation Studiosblank">http://www.orphanageanimation.com/ which is headed up by _Genndy Tartakovsky and will make their film debut with Power of the Dark Crystal in 2009.
The Orphanage did approximately 640 shots for the "That Yellow Bastard" section of Sin City (2005). 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.
Recently, 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 have also created commercials and a handful of Super Bowl potato spots for clients as varied as Comcast, Toshiba, HP, Benadryl and several award winning spots for Sony PlayStation's Ratchet & Clank.
