After a catastrophic water main break destroyed their offices and eventually closed the parent company, Assembly VFX artists banded together, and led by the division’s co-founder Dave Zeevalk and VP of Technology Luiz Garrido, launched a brand-new, fully operational visual effects business in just 10 days.
It started last December in New York as a fun Friday night for Assembly co-workers, complete with a holiday get-together and drinks among friends.But after the Assembly VFX division team partied it up, Dave Zeevalk, senior vice president and co-founder of the division got a call more sobering than morning coffee.
“Our VFX crew had a network of suites in the basement of one of Assembly’s commercial production spaces, North Six,” shared Zeevalk, whose VFX company was highly regarded for its work on series like , , , and .
“And the night before the party, one of the water mains from the business area above us had broken open and come through the ceiling of the shared space and flooded the basement.I think they said water had been flowing for 14 hours.” If it hadn’t been for an intern who had to go into the office that Saturday morning and saw water cascading down the walls, the space could have ended up totally submerged by Monday.Some servers were salvaged, but damage to the second-floor lofts, the production space and equipment on the first floor and basement was extensive, and expensive. “When a commercial space is impacted like that, you’re chopped at the knees,” notes Zeevalk.
“Luckily, none of that impacted our VFX division because we were completely cloud-based, unlike the rest of the company.But not long after the flooding, Assembly told everyone they were going to close the company.So, I and Luiz [Garrido, Assembly’s VP of Technology], took aside the VFX team we’d built and told them, ‘We’re starting our own LLC.
We don’t know if it will work, but we want all of us to stay working together.’ And the response we got from everyone was, ‘We’re doing this.’” So Mosaic VFX, now known for its effects work on series like (Season 6) and (Season 4), was born a bit more than six months ago out of friendship and flood water.Practically overnight, with Zeevalk as CEO and VFX supervisor and Garrido as chief technology innovation officer.“The experience of those 10 days setting up Mosaic was a testament to how much we all wanted to work together and how much fun we all had working together,” shares Geoff Bailey, the new company’s VFX creative director and VFX supervisor.
“It was stressful.We all worked a lot of late nights to get everything in place.All our clients had agreed to move over to Mosaic so we had to have infrastructure up and running and fast.
We had to have a corporate setup, a payment and production plan, everything you need to run a studio had to be ready in days.But I don’t remember us needing to have a lot of meetings.Everybody just knew what it took to run a studio and made it happen.” Starting a VFX studio wasn’t new to anyone on the Mosaic team.
Assembly VFX had been the brainchild of Zeevalk and Garrido, who had intended to create their own VFX studio some years prior to the flooding.But, at the time, the president of Assembly proposed that the duo start their own VFX studio under the already funded production house.Assembly VFX was a great success, trusted by partners like Netflix, Disney, Hulu, Apple TV, HBO, and many others to do right by their shows.
So, the experience in building a studio was there, but this was the first time the team had done it as a stand-alone company. And Mosaic wasn’t just bringing over Assembly VFX people; they were also bringing over production methodologies and workflows their people had been refining for the past eight years, which everyone at Mosaic says contributed to a big part of Assembly VFX’s success. “Before Assembly, many of us were working at the Alchemy X production company and we were working with older infrastructures and having issues with rendering capacity pretty early on,” shared Garrido.“So, we started using Google Cloud back in 2017 before many other companies were even talking about that as a possibility.But we saw the potential to have our work saved in a shared space that we could access from anywhere at any time.” Zeevalk adds, “During my time at Alchemy X, we moved three times because of space issues and needing more machines for more people.
We were constantly chasing more seats.But at Assembly VFX, the scope of artists we could work with was endless because we were not limited by seat count or because we were waiting on a piece of hardware.It was all immediate.” Google Cloud, with massive compute and storage capacity and a variety of rendering solutions that support asset transfer, on-demand licensing, and browser-based render management systems, offers a less expensive way to do more work and with flexible, ever-changing pipelines. According to Bailey, their team’s work on is where their utilization of the Cloud really shined. “I've always been incredibly proud of what we did on , not only for the end result of the work, but that was a project where we built a custom pipeline,” notes Bailey.
“Working on the Cloud allowed us to create custom-made type pipelines for particular shows.So, for , we developed a pipeline where our supervisors and leads worked directly out of the post-production offices with the director, Steven Zaillian, and they would define looks on a day-to-day basis in the office together.” He continues, “Meanwhile, we had a whole remote team in New York that then took the approved looks that the leads and director came up with and rippled those out across sequences.So, it gave us flexibility while giving the director and his team all the support of an in-house VFX team, such as the tech support and creative and production support of a larger studio.
I think, in the end, we had a team of 14 people create close to 1,000 shots over the course of the season.” Bailey, Zeevalk, Garrido and the rest of the team have prided themselves for many years on having a pipeline able to flex and flow with both long-form and short-form projects.It came in handy when Assembly VFX was asked to work on a couple campaigns for Maybelline, one of which involved a 200-foot pink bear that chased and played hide-and-seek with people through the city streets. “We aren’t rigid with our work,” says Zeevalk, “We all understand that there are a lot of ways to get things done.We have a structure in place, but we do bend those guard rails.” Garrido adds, “I like to say we are building the plane as it flies.
Working on and was stressful because we were still developing a lot of the tools we wanted to use.But that pressure made us move faster and better.” And it still does, clearly.How else does a VFX company kick off the ground after little more than a week? “We really enjoy the problem-solving side of VFX and that really translated,” says Mary Swain, Head of production at Mosaic, who was one of the organizers of the holiday party which preceded the flood.
“Without challenges, it would all just get boring.But I’ve got to say too that we also owe a lot of this to good leadership.To have technology is one thing, but to have someone like Luiz pushing that technology is another thing.
That’s an inherent value of him as a person.” Within the first 40 days of being in business, Mosaic delivered their VFX work for 6 shows.And in addition to and , the company has since worked on feature films like for Apple TV+ as well as continued with their commercial work with Maybelline and Ultherapy, Deep Eddy, Fidelity, and Balmain Paris.“We also worked on a title sequence for one of CBS and Paramount+’s new shows and that was done completely at Mosaic,” shares Zeevalk.
“We were actually given that job just a couple days after we shared that we were going to be starting Mosaic.” Swain says that since the team started Mosaic, it feels like “the roof has come off,” and there are no limits to what they can do and what projects they can take on.Looking ahead to the future, Zeevalk hopes their VFX family can grow and have remote workers in the UK, Canada and other places that also allows Mosaic to reach into more areas of VFX production. “My goal is to have a couple people there who can work on shows on-site,” says Zeevalk, who plans to expand operations to Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal by fall 2025.“We also recently expanded operations to London and are hoping to announce a new project running there by the end of the year.
We’re currently expanding operations to New Jersey and should be fully operational there by August.” Garrido adds, “I don’t really dream that much but if I were to have a big dream, it would be to make other people’s dreams come true.So, I hope I can make Dave, Mary, and everyone’s dreams come true by doing what I love to do and having fun with the tools and technology we continue to build on at Mosaic.” Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime.She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment.
Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
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