Lockdown has tried and tested everyone but new opportunities have presented themselves too, and during the past 12 months a new collaboration between Centroid, a world leader in motion capture, and Molinare (established in 1973) has come into focus. It’s a venture that pulls together the worlds of motion capture and the broader span of post-production and visual effects work that Molinare has developed its creative industry identity around. 3D World catches up with Phil Stilgoe (CEO of Centroid), Nigel Bennett (managing director, Molinare) and Glen Gathard (creative director, Molinare) to discuss their new venture together in central London, bringing performance capture and post-production image making together.

Hearing Phil Stilgoe speak about the collaboration between Centroid and Molinare it’s notable how marked his comments are by a spirit of optimism. Stilgoe makes the point that the sensibility of a film studio lot comprising diverse specialisms coming together underpins the new central London venture for the long-established motion capture company. This sense of promise and opportunity has emerged from a moment, in late 2019, when Stilgoe and his colleagues at Centroid moved from its original base at Pinewood Studios to a new base at Uxbridge, just west of London. With that move, a sense of new possibilities began to evolve and that was soon rounded out when Molinare in Soho, central London, with whom Centroid had a longstanding association, suggested that the two companies more formally come together to create Centroid@Molinare. The new venture between the two companies will allow them to combine talents and technology and support the relationships that exist between performance capture and post-production. In its visual effects work, Molinare’s workflow centres around Flame and Nuke workstations and in providing VFX supervision on set.

Established in 1996, Centroid’s first movie project was Lost In Space and now, 25 years later, the studio’s work embraces movies, games and other platforms.