Legend 3D ready to hire ex-Digital Domain workers from Florida

Legend 3D, the 3-D conversion company based in San Diego, says it wants to hire some of the 300 workers recently laid off at Digital Domain’s studio in Florida.

Legend 3D founder and chief creative officer Barry Sandrew said his company would hire up to 200 workers in the next three months to work on several projects, and that he hopes many of the new hires will come from Florida.

Digital Domain Media Group, owner of the Venice-based visual effects house, last week announced it was closing its new computer animation facility in Port St. Lucie and laying off most of its 320 employees. The company also said its chief executive John Textor was stepping down as part of a restructuring to avert a bankruptcy filing.

“We’re getting a flood of resumes from Digital Domain Florida,” Sandrew said. “We’ll take as many as we can. Digital Domain is a great visual effects studio and everyone hopes they can survive.”

The new hires will work mainly as compositing and depth artists on several unnamed movies being converted into stereoscopic viewing.

Legend 3D has created 3-D conversion work on such movies as “The Smurfs,” “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” and “Hugo.” It’s also done work for the 3-D re-releases of such movies as Tony Scott’s 1986 movie “Top Gun.”

It costs between $40,000 to $70,000 a minute to convert a feature film into 3-D, a process than can take from six weeks to eight months, depending on whether the project is a new film or a re-release.

Although 3-D ticket sales aren’t as robust as they once were, Sandrew said his business hasn’t slackened.

“When people talk about 3-D on the wane, it doesn’t compute,” he said. “All I see is 3-D increasing steadily.”

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