Managing Director/Producer Matthew McManus and Creative Director/Flame Artist Andrew MacDonald — award-winning talents and long-time collaborators — have joined forces to launch KILT. A digital studio with a focus on visual effects and postproduction, the new company is positioned well for the changing production landscape and new economy.
Additionally, KILT has just finished its premiere project; a commercial for 2K Sports which launched earlier this month. To view the new commercial and KILT’s company reel, go to: www.kiltstudios.com

According to McManus, the company philosophy is “rooted in the belief that a small, flexible highly-talented, multi-disciplined, and experienced staff can produce good work,” he says. “KILT is well suited to meet the changing needs of the production landscape as we experience it today.”

A service company to advertising, content originator and production companies in commercials, features, music video and television — KILT’s approach is unique. As MacDonald points out, the duo saw the “digital tsunami” coming a few years ago, but they were unable from within an already-existing visual effects/post company to change direction due to dedicated architecture and overhead. “The move away from traditional means of advertising and content, to that of Internet and mobile technologies has created a new way of collaborating with clients,” he explains. “Companies now more than ever have to be flexible to meet the ever-evolving media environment.”

KILT launches with a core team that includes founding partners: McManus and MacDonald, as well as CG Artists Andy Lesniak and Michael Johnson. Together, they have a multi-disciplined approach and the ability to adapt their working pipeline to any project (as opposed to forcing a project into an existing, and potentially damaging workflow) regardless of the delivery format: television, mobile, internet, etc. A key aspect of the studio’s flexibility is scalability. “We can easily expand and contract as the project requires, and we are portable as well. So we can set up and work wherever our client is or wants us to be,” adds MacDonald.

This new mode of collaboration served KILT well on its premiere project, a commercial project for Director Peter Berg and 2K Sports. Featuring the collision of two trains against a desert landscape, symbolizing the power of baseball, the KILT team was called on to create the train’s collision. The athletes had already been shot on-set, so creative problem solving was needed. The KILT team recommended to Director Berg that they create an entirely computer-generated 3D environment, and then integrate the CG elements with the live-action footage. The director agreed, so a small team from KILT led by Producer Matthew McManus traveled to the high desert and shot reference plates with the Red Camera. They then integrated the cg trains and environments into the commercial’s live-action footage of the athletes. KILT artists were able to create fully CG trains using Maya and Mental Ray, and rendering using Lightwave. They had to custom-write some software for the integration of the three programs, but all this was accomplished on deadline and to budget.

KILT is now hard at work on a DirecTV campaign, which includes a series of 14 spots for NFL Prime Ticket, also scheduled to break in July.

www.kiltstudios.com