NEW YORK - Last week, I received an Anonymous email with a letter attached to it that was said to have been prepared by a core group of former Look Effects employees. The visual effects studio, which had four locations - Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Vancouver and Germany - recently closed, and many of its employees were not given their un-paid wages, some amounting to as much as $50,000.
Understandably, the letter had a frustrated tone, with the group citing their loyalty to the company during tough times, and the lack of respect they feel wasn't given to them in return for their work and dedication. The letter also went on to criticize the owners/executives, and their new gigs in the VFX industry.
I reached out to Look Effects for comment, and within a day, got a call back from Mark Driscoll, who was a co-founder and president in the company. He was very forthcoming regarding the studio's struggles and missteps, and answered all of the questions I threw at him.
Here, in an exclusive interview, Driscoll responds to the anonymous letter.
Mark, you are aware of the letter. What do you think?
I will be 100 percent transparent, as painful as it is because I ran this company for 17 years, and it's come to a very sad, unfortunate, difficult end. But I am not going to be one of those business owners who runs away from the reality. I won't be able to make everything right for everybody, but I can at least be forthcoming.
What's the status of the different locations at this point?
We did close the company. We did not file bankruptcy. We poured everything we could into it - personally and professionally, but we just couldn't keep it afloat. We ran out of money. We ran out of resources, ran out of good will, and were faced with the unfortunate situation of not being able to see a pathway to continue what we were doing and extend favors from employees. There just wasn't a clear way to bring in enough work to allow the machine to continue. It was a difficult decision.
Were any efforts made to sell the company?
Here's a little bit of the back story. We spent months and months working on different ways forward - searching for investors, searching for other companies to acquire us, looking for merger opportunities, looking for straight investment opportunities . Unfortunately, we made a mistake or otherwise of pouring our life savings into company, so there wasn't any room to pull from people's equity in their houses or anything.
Look Effects was obviously a talented studio. How did it lead up to this?
I've spent many sleepless nights thinking how we got here, because there are a lot of people out there who are definitely angry at me and in this anonymous letter, and that's mine to bear. I wasn't the only one who contributed to getting us there. I had a lot of people who worked with me that didn't live up to expectations, and still we owe those people money. There are all sorts of reason as to how you get here.
Looking back, can you point to anything specific?
There are a couple of key things that got us here - one was the show Noah for Paramount. It was publicly in the trades about how much they lost on it. We lost unbelievable amounts of money. And with a small company, it's hard. That came out of 2013. We thought we could figure a way out and get the employees paid back.
As a VFX service provider, should if matter if the film was successful or not?
We had no stake in the film, we were just contracted to do work - good or bad. We were paid a bunch of money to do the movie, and there were a whole host of issues why we ran into trouble on that movie. Some of which were our own fault, some which were the show's fault. We lost a lot of money on that show, and as we were charting a path forward to 2014, we had a very large show in New York that went belly up on us after, let's say, $700,000 in payments. That was the next piece of the puzzle. That was a significant blow.
The letter suggests that many employees stuck with you during the difficult times.
We had lots of good will from employees, and I won't shake the fact that we ended up with a lot of people who were upset that I wasn't able to figure out a way to make good on the past wage obligation as quickly as I had hoped. And there are people who are arguably and fairly and accurately upset by that. And we lost a handful of people as a result of that.
And all this happened right at beginning of the normal, cyclical summer slump. Summer is traditionally slower in our business, and we just didn't have the capacity of work to relieve obligations. We would have needed a significant amount more work that we weren't able to get. It became pretty clear we couldn't continue.
Tell us about the Mass Market/Psyop arrangement.
What we did do though, in the course of all these conversations with investors and mergers, is, I got to know a company - Mass Market and Psyop - and I've been able to negotiate for some of staff to move over to Mass Market in New York and Los Angeles and Vancouver. There's no merger or investment - and I want to be very clear with that. Some of us were able to move over and become employees at Mass Market and build for them a feature and TV brand.
How many employees were affected?
I was able to secure a lot of our New York employees, including our key creative director and producer. In LA, we were able to bring over a decent amount of our staff. In Vancouver, we're bringing over a decent amount of staff, as well. Some people did not come with us. They elected not to. And that's where we're at.
The letter mentions significant unpaid wages. Can you address that?
I want to be very clear [about] the anonymous letter: Yes, Look owes its former staff and freelancers a large amount of money. I
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NEW YORK - Last week, I received an Anonymous email with a letter attached to it that was said to have been prepared by a core group of former Look Effects employees. The visual effects studio, which had four locations - Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Vancouver and Germany - recently closed, and many of its employees were not given their un-paid wages, some amounting to as much as $50,000. 
