The Orphanage was a visual effects

Visual effects

Visual effects are the various processes by which imagery is created and/or manipulated outside the context of a live action shoot. Visual effects involve the integration of live-action footage and generated imagery to create environments which look realistic, but would be dangerous, costly, or...

 studio located in California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

. It had offices in Los Angeles

Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

 and San Francisco

San Francisco, California

San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

. It was co-founded in 1999 by Stu Maschwitz

Stu Maschwitz

Stuart T. Maschwitz, commonly known as Stu Maschwitz, was the co-founder and chief technology officer of The Orphanage, a visual effects company that was based in California. He has worked as senior visual effects supervisor on several films...

, Jonathan Rothbart and Scott Stewart, who all previously worked at Industrial Light and Magic

Industrial Light and Magic

Industrial Light & Magic is an Academy Award-winning motion picture visual effects company that was founded in May 1975 by George Lucas and is owned by Lucasfilm. Lucas created the company when he discovered that the special effects department at 20th Century Fox was shut down after he was given...

. 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

Magic bullet (software)

Magic Bullet is a video editing plug-in sold by Red Giant Software and originally created by visual effects company The Orphanage. It gives video footage a film look. It is compatible with Adobe After Effects and NLEs such as Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, Sony Vegas, and Avid. It is used by over...

 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 was known for its work on both commercials and features. The company recently launched Orphanage Animation Studios

Orphanage Animation Studios

Orphanage Animation Studios was an American production company launched by The Orphanage that was headed up by Genndy Tartakovsky to produce his show Sym-Bionic Titan. As the show was canceled, the company was shut down in April 2011....

http://www.orphanageanimation.com/ which was headed up by Genndy Tartakovsky

Genndy Tartakovsky

Genndy Borisovich Tartakovsky is a Russian-American television animator, director and producer. His best-known creations are Dexter's Laboratory, Samurai Jack, Star Wars: Clone Wars, and Sym-Bionic Titan...

 and was due to make their film debut with the ill-fated Power of the Dark Crystal.

The Orphanage did approximately 640 shots for the "That Yellow Bastard" section of Sin City

Sin City (film)

Sin City, also known as Frank Miller's Sin City, is a 2005 crime thriller film written, produced and directed by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez...

(2005). as well as three other films with Robert Rodriguez

Robert Rodriguez

Robert Anthony Rodríguez is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor and musician. He shoots and produces many of his films in his native Texas and Mexico. He has directed such films as Desperado, From Dusk till Dawn, The Faculty, Spy Kids, Sin City, Planet...

, Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over

Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over

Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over is a 2003 American action-adventure family film directed by Robert Rodriguez and the third film in the Spy Kids series. It was released in the United States on July 25, 2003. The film featured the return of many cast members from the past two films, although most were in...

, The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D

The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D

The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D , is a 2005 adventure and fantasy film directed by Robert Rodriguez. The film uses the same anaglyph 3-D technology used in Spy Kids 3D: Game Over. The film stars Taylor Lautner, Cayden Boyd, Taylor Dooley and George Lopez...

and the Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...

/Robert Rodriguez

Robert Rodriguez

Robert Anthony Rodríguez is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor and musician. He shoots and produces many of his films in his native Texas and Mexico. He has directed such films as Desperado, From Dusk till Dawn, The Faculty, Spy Kids, Sin City, Planet...

 co-directed double feature Grindhouse.

The company has worked on a number of Hollywood blockbusters including Superman Returns

Superman Returns

Superman Returns is a 2006 superhero film directed by Bryan Singer. It is the fifth and final installment in the original Superman film series and serves as a alternate sequel to Superman and Superman II by ignoring the events of Superman III and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace .The film stars...

, Night at the Museum

Night at the Museum

Night at the Museum is a 2006 fantasy adventure-comedy film based on the 1993 children's book The Night at the Museum by Milan Trenc. It follows a divorced father trying to settle down, impress his son, and find his destiny...

, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is a 2006 adventure fantasy film and the second film of the Pirates of the Caribbean series, following Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl . It was directed by Gore Verbinski, written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, and produced by...

& At World's End and the Korea

Korea

Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...

n blockbuster The Host

The Host (film)

The Host is a 2006 South Korean monster film, which also contains elements of comedy and drama films. The film was directed by Bong Joon-ho, who co-wrote the screenplay, along with Baek Chul-hyun....

. They created the Head-up display

Head-Up Display

A head-up display or heads-up display is any transparent display that presents data without requiring users to look away from their usual viewpoints...

 (HUD) for the hi-tech suit of armour in the Marvel Studios

Marvel Studios

Marvel Studios, originally Marvel Films, is an American television and motion picture studio based in Manhattan Beach, California. Marvel Studios is a subsidiary of Marvel Entertainment, a self-contained part of the The Walt Disney Company conglomerate....

 production of Iron Man

Iron Man (film)

Iron Man is a 2008 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. Directed by Jon Favreau, the film stars Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark, an industrialist and master engineer who builds a powered exoskeleton and becomes the technologically advanced superhero, Iron...

, for which their work was nominated for a 2008 VES Award (for Best Compositing).

They have also created commercials and a handful of Super Bowl

Super Bowl

The Super Bowl is the championship game of the National Football League , the highest level of professional American football in the United States, culminating a season that begins in the late summer of the previous calendar year. The Super Bowl uses Roman numerals to identify each game, rather...

 spots for clients as varied as Comcast

Comcast

Comcast Corporation is the largest cable operator, home Internet service provider, and fourth largest home telephone service provider in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers in 39 states and the...

, Toshiba

Toshiba

is a multinational electronics and electrical equipment corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of electrical products, spanning information & communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and...

, HP, Benadryl

Benadryl

Benadryl is a brand name allergy medicine marketed over-the-counter by Johnson & Johnson subsidiary McNeil Consumer Healthcare. Prior to 2007, Benadryl was marketed by Pfizer Consumer Healthcare...

, Nicoderm

Nicoderm

NicoDerm, also known as NicoDerm CQ is a branded over the counter palliative nicotine replacement therapy used to minimize the withdrawal effects involved in quitting smoking....

 and several award winning spots for Sony PlayStation

PlayStation

The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console first released by Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan on December 3, .The PlayStation was the first of the PlayStation series of consoles and handheld game devices. The PlayStation 2 was the console's successor in 2000...

's Ratchet & Clank

Ratchet & Clank

Ratchet & Clank is a 3D platformer/shooter video game for the PlayStation 2, developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. Released in 2002, it is the first game in the Ratchet & Clank series....

.

On February 4, 2009 the company announced it was suspending operations indefinitely, after 10 years in the business. The announcement was made by company co-founders Stu Maschwitz

Stu Maschwitz

Stuart T. Maschwitz, commonly known as Stu Maschwitz, was the co-founder and chief technology officer of The Orphanage, a visual effects company that was based in California. He has worked as senior visual effects supervisor on several films...

, Scott Stewart and Jonathan Rothbart, and announced on Mr. Maschwitz's blog

Blog

A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...

. No immediate notice was posted on the company's website. Although the announcement gave no reason for the closing, bloggers attributed the closing to general economic conditions.

The Orphanage selected filmography

{| class="wikitable"
|-
!Year!!Notable films
|-
|2001
|
Vanilla Sky

Vanilla Sky

Vanilla Sky is a 2001 American psychological thriller film directed, co-produced and co-written by Cameron Crowe. The film is an English-language remake of the 1997 Spanish movie Abre los ojos , the screenplay for which was written by Alejandro Amenábar and Mateo Gil...

|-
|2002
|
Point of Origin

Point of origin

Point of origin may refer to:* Point of Origin * Point of Origin * "Point of Origin", an episode of season 5 of the US medical drama ER* "Point of Origin" * Point of Origin , 2004...

 

Path To War

Path to War

Path to War is a 2002 American biographical television film, produced by HBO and directed by John Frankenheimer that deals directly with the Vietnam War as seen through the eyes of United States President Lyndon B...

 

Hero 

Jackass The Movie
|-
|2003
|
Jeepers Creepers 2 

Seabiscuit

Seabiscuit (film)

Seabiscuit is a 2003 American biographical film based on the best-selling non-fiction book Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand...