Mirada – Purveyors of Handmade Storytelling

After a string of bad industry news it is great to be able to bring news of a new venture. Mirada is a new production studio that will develop and produce television programming, video games, commercials and films. Designed for storytellers, the studio is a collaboration between director Guillermo del Toro, Motion Theory principals Mathew Cullen and Javier Jimenez and cinematographer Guillermo Navarro. The 25,000 square-foot facility is located in Marina Del Rey and the company aims to employ between 50 and 100 people depending on work load.

Mirada web site: www.mirada.com

Press Release:

Los Angeles, California (December 9, 2010) – Guillermo del Toro has teamed with director Mathew Cullen, cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, and executive producer Javier Jimenez to form Mirada, a company designed for storytellers. The four have joined forces to realize their vision of a collaborative space where they and other filmmakers can work with Mirada’s artists to create and produce projects that span digital production and content for film, television, advertising, interactive and other media.
Del Toro said, “We are creating a storytelling engine in the form of a company – an imaginarium, where we are free to explore the practical possibilities of transmedia without compartmentalizing our artistic process. Mirada will be an adaptive entity, constantly in transformation. We see a different model that looks beyond what the market is doing right now to where it will be in ten years.”
“We’re taking a multidisciplinary approach, bringing design and cinematography to the forefront,” said Cullen. “Del Toro and Navarro have such a unique creative perspective – you see it in films like Pan’s Labyrinth, The Devil’s Backbone and Hellboy. They embrace those great timeless narrative traditions, and Mirada will be building on that history.”

Mirada’s 25,000 square-foot studio in Marina del Rey is steeped in Hollywood history, with key sequences from Blade Runner and Close Encounters of the Third Kind having been shot within its walls. Following in these footsteps, Mirada has transformed the space into a state-of-the-art facility that houses design, animation, post and visual effects, an art department, a sound stage to facilitate traditional and virtual productions, and a full camera shop. They have strategically chosen to headquarter in Los Angeles in order to build on the community of world-class talent there.

All four partners will be working out of the studio, developing and overseeing original works, driving Mirada’s personal, agile approach to digital production, and guiding the larger creative agenda of the company.
“We want to grow Mirada so that the possibilities of creation grow along with it,” said del Toro. “We are, by moving forward, actually returning to our roots as storytellers.”

Guillermo del Toro is a renowned director, producer, screenwriter, novelist and designer. Mathew Cullen and Javier Jimenez have directed and produced through Motion Theory more than 300 projects together, earning multiple Grammy, Emmy and MTV awards. Guillermo Navarro is an Academy Award-winning cinematographer with more than 30 films to his credit.

Mirada’s management team includes industry veterans Grady Hall, executive creative director; John Fragomeni, head of visual effects; Patrick Nugent, general manager; and Mark Allen Kurtz, executive producer.