After 10 years in business, ComputerCafé founding partners Jeff Barnes and David Ebner are renaming their feature EFX studio CaféFX (www.cafefx.com) and are creating a corporate umbrella, ComputerCafe Group, for the company’s two divisions. Last year, ComputerCafé acquired Santa Monica’s Pacific Data Post and added a commercials-and-music-video division dubbed The Syndicate.
ComputerCafé was originally founded to produce broadcast promotions and television ID packages. In addition to commercials for Doritos, Microsoft, and Burger King, the studio has completed effects and animation work for dozens of feature films such as League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Spy Kids 3-D Game Over, Panic Room, Spy Kids 2, The Core, Armageddon and Flubber.
The Syndicate (www.syndicate.tv) was launched in the spring of 2002 to focus on short-form projects, and has handled telecine and visual effects for Nissan, Jeep, Adidas, Uncle Ben’s, Metro PCS, a PSA campaign for the Red Cross and spots for the California Milk Advisory Board. Its music video, telecine and EFX projects have included George Michael’s Freeek (an award-winning video from Universal Polydor), Incubus’ Are You In? (Epic), Johnny Cash’s Hurt (Universal), Audioslave’s Cochise (Epic), Bruce Springsteen’s Lonesome Day (Columbia), and J-Lo and LL Cool J’s All I Have (Sony).
All ComputerCafé Group divisions will carry the same new logo and basic design, though each division will have a slightly different color palette and name. Both the Santa Maria and the new Santa Monica studio are outfitted with the latest EFX, design, compositing and rendering technologies, including Discreet Logic Flame, Commotion, Lightwave, Digital Fusion, PhotoShop and After Effects.
