Framestore partners with Dell for North American expansion

London VFX firm behind Gravity's visuals deploys Dell solutions in new studio

British visual effects (VFX) company Framestore has deployed Dell end-to-end solutions to help expand its presence in North America.

The visual effects studio, based in the heart of Soho in central London, produced visuals for Gravity and Iron Man 3, some of the top films of 2013, and is working on RoboCop and Edge of Tomorrow - two of this year's most anticipated titles.

Dell solutions that were adopted in the establishment of Framestore's new Montreal office include Dell T3610 and T5610 workstations, PowerEdge M610 and M620 Blade servers and XPS 8700 desktop computers.

"Dell has a made firm commitment to the professional engineering desktop and we can see that in the build quality of the machines we are purchasing. The Dell Precision T5610 is a world-class workstation that addresses the key requirements of demanding Tier One VFX artists," said Framestore CTO Steve MacPherson.

"As we move forward into increasingly advanced levels of simulation and photorealism having this power on the desktop presents a wealth of creative opportunities for our artists. These machines are both powerful and cost-effective."

MacPherson credits Dell as being a major factor Framestores successful expansion into North America, with the new office being established quickly and easily, the planning phase having started a little over one year ago.

"Part of the success of this project is due to the help we received from Dell in terms of supply chain logistics, financing and technical support," he said.

"Our entire machine room was commissioned with Dell's participation - racks, cooling, storage and rendering - all this combined to make the planning process straightforward while the execution and delivery were both efficient and cost-effective," Macpherson added.