ArsenalFX Color is celebrating its tenth anniversary with an ambitious, effort to grow and extend its reach. The boutique post-production facility, which provides dailies, color, finishing and visual effects services for television and film is planning to relocate to a new, standalone facility in Santa Monica. Additionally, having successfully operated a satellite facility in Atlanta for the past five years, it intends to open new satellite operations in production centers around the U.S. and Canada with one slated to open in Albuquerque, New Mexico this fall. It will offer dailies and post services for television and film productions operating in the state.
Founded in 2012 by colorist Larry Field, VFX supervisor O.T. Hight and conform artist Josh Baca, ArsenalFX Color provides a full complement of high-end post services for episodic television in an intimate, creative setting. Recent projects include the series Rap Sh*T for HBO Max, Joe Pickett for Paramount +, Grey’s Anatomy for ABC and With Love for Amazon Prime.
ArsenalFX Color’s new Santa Monica facility will include a variety of added resources, including two more color grading suites and a DI theater, as well as larger visual effects production space. It will also feature an entirely new infrastructure with expanded support for cloud and remote services. Those improvements will result in greater efficiency and provide the company with more flexibility in managing projects.
One thing that won’t change, according to Field, is the client experience. “We will keep our boutique mindset,” he says. “We want our team to be fully engaged with their projects. This company was founded by three artists who still run the facility and continue to work on projects every day. We don’t have layers of management. Our philosophy is to remain artist driven.”
ArsenalFX Color’s satellite facilities are designed to provide high-quality post services to television productions operating outside Southern California. The company selected Albuquerque for its next site due to the large number of productions that have located to New Mexico to take advantage of the state’s generous tax incentive program. “We want to have a presence in hotspots where production is happening,” says Field. “Our plan is to establish permanent facilities to provide dailies and finishing services to studios and independent producers.”
The company is just beginning to build out a production space in Albuquerque, but its plans are already generating an enthusiastic response. “The state’s film commission is excited to have us there,” says VP/Business Development Cortney Haile. “We are thrilled to provide our post services and help grow the industry in Albuquerque.” Haile adds that ArsenalFX Color is also evaluating underserved production markets in Western Canada and in U.S. cities in the northeast and southeast for additional satellite facilities.
Field, Hight and Baca founded ArsenalFX Color in 2012, drawing on their deep experience as post-production artists for top-rated television shows. A pioneer from the start, the new company was one of the first post houses in the industry to implement file-based workflows, which soon became industry-standard. It also took the novel step of establishing itself in Santa Monica at a time when most Southern California television post houses were located in Hollywood or Burbank to be close to the major studios.
“Santa Monica was considered a tough place to do television,” recalls Field. “But we created an infrastructure that supports a hybrid approach where in-person sessions are supplemented with remote screenings to accommodate the schedules of individual clients. We set up screening facilities in their offices to help them maximize their time and efficiency. Our clients became used to the way we worked, and they liked it.” He adds that ArsenalFX Color’s early adoption of remote technologies enabled it to adjust easily to the pandemic when a lot of work had to be conducted off-site.
Having begun with its three founders and small technical staff, ArsenalFX Color now employs 30 artists and support personnel with the capacity to service multiple shows simultaneously. “We’re positioned well to do great work,” Field says. “We take a hands-on approach with every project. We’re not trying to do a hundred shows. Even as we build our new facility and reach out to places across the country, we are maintaining a manageable size so that we keep our edge, nothing gets lost and we continue to deliver the excellence our clients expect.”
About ARSENALFX COLOR
ArsenalFX Color, founded in 2012, is a talent-driven, high-end, full-spectrum, high-end post production company serving the television and feature film industry. Its staff of artists, technicians and producers are supported by state-of-the-art color, visual effects, conform and dailies toolsets in a 9,000 sq. ft. Tier-1 secured facility. Recent credits include Raising Dion (Netflix), Lovecraft Country (HBO), The Good Doctor (ABC), New Amsterdam (NBC) and Grey’s Anatomy (ABC).
