A Look Back on 2025
Trying to keep up tradition here and do a look back on 2025 as a year; mostly professional but with a bit of personal sprinkled in! If I could sum up 2025 in one word I think I'd have to go with the word "surprising" but even that feels a bit flat...
"If a window of opportunity appears, don't pull down the shade." – Tom Peters.
The year began extremely busy - coming off the back of last years big film project at Untold where I moonlit as a CG Sup to jumping into one of the bigger superbowl ads also moonlighting as a CG Sup. Intense back to back prpojects, and I felt it at the end of the project. Taking time off after an intense project always helps and after this I took a few weeks off to come back with a fresh mind.
Rolling into Feb this news rocked the entire industry and rightly so. Plagued with trouble for years, it had finally caught up and Technicolor was no more.
We were fortunate enough at Untold to carry on the work for Alien: Earth where taking on this job meant ingesting over 300TB of work in progress from MPC, adapting it to fit into our pipeline and still finish off the work. I'm proud to say that we did this without skipping a beat on the project and it looks amazing. Massive talent joined the studio to finish it off and we got the Untold Toronto studio up and running too in record time.
Click the image to see more on the Untold website.
Moving into June/July I was fortunate enough to spend time working in LA for an NDA project. I had a blast and got to meet a whole new bunch of talented artists in the process. Helping to spin up 3D capability in the LA office, assiting in hiring the team while establishing the Untold workflow was a challenge I hadn't seen coming in 2025. I enjoyed every moment laying down the foundations and hope I get to go back.
One of my fave pics of LA I took while out there.
After some time off in August I returned to LA unexpectedly helping to finish the same project; a lot of time and effort during this month getting it done. There were some familiar faces flying in from the London office too and it made this a tiring but rewarding month to have spent in LA. I just wish I had gotten to see more of it this time around!
Seeing the rest of the year out meant returning to London, taking a little time off to rest and recover from what ended up being 3 months living out of a suitcase! Couldn't have predicted that at the start of the year.
As we see the end of 2025 there's some amazing work going on at Untold for a whole variety of long and short form work. We seem busier than ever and the studio's growth shows this; we're adapting with new pipeline efficiencies that allow for bigger scale projects. USD is here and I'm happy to say that I am playing some part in the design of how we use it. Being promoted to the Head of Lighting was a big highlight too, I'm excited to see what happens going forwards.
Looking at the wider industry though, it's been tough to see the impacts that changing landscapes have had and AI has been a big part of this. LinkedIn can be a pretty sad place to scroll sometimes, seeing studio closures and the amount of people affected has been tough. Also being in LA for the first time and seeing how much work has left the city was an eye-opener.
2025 although challenging at times gave me a hell of a lot to smile about and be grateful for. New doors opened and old ones shut gracefully. I could write another 10 paragraphs but maybe I should just write a bit more regularly in 2026?
Here's to another trip around the Sun, hope 2026 brings lots of joy 🍻
Carlo