Freefolk strengthens longform offering with creation of Freefolk Film & Episodic

Soho-based VFX studio, Freefolk has announced they have considerably strengthened their longform offering, with promotions, news hires, a new name, Freefolk Film & Episodic and a BAFTA Craft nomination. 

Freefolk Film & Episodic, is run by a dedicated team, separate to Freefolk Commercials, led by VFX supervisor, Steve Murgatroyd, formerly Freefolk’s Head of 2D, and VFX executive producer, Meg Guidon.   

Harin Hirani is Head of 3D and the division has been bolstered with new hire, Simon-Pierre, Senior Lead Nuke Artist, whose credits, across film and television, include Gravity, Interstellar, Cursed and The Third Day. 

Despite the pandemic the facility has seen an upturn in their work in this area, and in the past 18 months they have worked on Cursed (Netflix) for which they have been nominated for a BAFTA Craft Award, The Third Day (Sky / HBO) and most recently the team delivered over 300 shots for Pennyworth, season 2 for Warner Horizon. 

Freefolk Film & Episodic’s Murgatroyd commented on why now is the right time to invest further in this side of the business: “We now have an impressive credit list, a strong team and a fully upgraded technical set up, specifically designed for this type of work.  We are now in a position to scale up to 100+ artists, have the ability to deliver at 8k and are excited about the continued growth of Freefolk Film & Episodic.” 

As well as the promotions and new hires, the studio has also made considerable investment in their infrastructure and are fully security compliant with best practice for VFX. 

CTO, Paul Wright, explained: “We have a bespoke VFX pipeline that is constantly developed to enable us to work more efficiently and creatively.  When it became clear last year that we would have to work from home due to Coronavirus, we built a secure and safe WFH solution for remote artists and staff, this means that only pixels and not data leave the facility.   

We also realised the need for a colour accurate real-time remote viewing solution that was incredibly secure for clients content and yet easy for clients and producers to use. We chose to invest in a Sohonet ClearView to stream sessions or reviews to anyone anywhere and we utilise ftrack shot and asset management software from project inception to final delivery, it is fully integrated with the pipeline.  We have recently upgraded to a new Pixit Media Pixstor production server, this allows us to support more artists and more intense workflows.”  

In 2016, building on its 17 years of award winning commercials work, Freefolk realised the quality of episodic content had risen, and, the opportunities and demand for HETV VFX.  At this point the studio expanded its offering and subsequently won an Emmy award for their VFX on The Alienist (Paramount TV / TNT / Netflix).