Custom f/x firm's growth healthy sign for biz

'Wildfire' workload calls for bigger digs, staff

By MARC GRASER

After little over a year in operation, visual f/x boutique Custom Film Effects ("Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me," "The Mummy," "Fight Club") has grown from a two-man operation to seven and may ramp up to 12 people.

Outgrowing its cramped Glendale offices, company is moving into its own 3,000-square foot facility at 711 South Main Street in Burbank.

CFE will continue to focus on optical printing, post-production feature film effects, main and end titles for motion pictures, color and format changes, blue/green screen composites, video-to-film transfers and trailers.

Like 'wildfire'

"We're not geared up to doing big visual f/x films," company founder Mark Dornfeld said. "Every movie has a certain amount of f/x in them. There's enough smaller projects to work on. Business has taken off like wildfire. It tells us there has been a need for us. We will never expand to the point where we lose our boutique flavor, since this is our niche."

Before starting the company in February last year, Dornfeld served as an optical f/x supervisor on "101 Dalmatians," "The Usual Suspects" and "A Civil Action" at Buena Vista Visual Effects and later served as a digital f/x supervisor on "Armageddon" and "Mighty Joe Young" at Disney's Buena Vista Imaging arm.

CFE's first project was the main titles on Fox's "Pushing Tin." It recently completed work on "Scary Movie," "Meet the Parents" and "Me, Myself & Irene."