Cinesite (also known as Cinesite Studios and Cinesite VFX) is a visual effects and feature animation studio. Its registered office in London opened in 1991, offering services in visual effects for film and television. It subsequently opened a studio in Montréal in 2014, for visual effects and feature animation. The company's feature animation division is Cinesite Animation.
In August 2015 it was announced that Cinesite had merged with Vancouver-based visual effects company Image Engine.
Cinesite opened its doors in Hollywood in 1991 and London in 1994, originally as a service bureau for Kodak's Cineon digital film system. Both locations subsequently evolved to become full service visual effects facilities. In 2003, Kodak merged the Cinesite Hollywood office into LaserPacific.
In 1999, the London facility became increasingly involved in television work, creating Emmy Award nominated visual effects for Cleopatra (1999), Band of Brothers (2002) and Into The Storm (2009) and winning Emmy Awards for Rome in 2006 and Generation Kill in 2008. It also won a Royal Television Society award for its work on Band of Brothers.
Cinesite has completed visual effects for all eight films in the Harry Potter franchise. The company's former model-making division created the scale model of Hogwarts, as well as Wonkaville in Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) and the grand finale parliament explosion sequence in V for Vendetta (2006).