New Year, New Chapter: An Open Letter from the Founder

Dear friends,

For the last decade or so, Christmas time has, for the Crater team, been like the dark before the dawn… the final stretch when the pressure is boiling, strength is giving out and you’re almost ready to send it all to hell - but you somehow end up pushing through and making it to the other side.

As 2019 is winding down, the atmosphere at the studio is strangely still for this time of year.

The slower days give me an opportunity for some quiet reflection. As I roam around the rooms, I absorb every tiny detail. I find myself smiling, the reality of an entire lifetime within these walls hitting me in the head.

A name that began as a philosophical joke during Serbia’s grayest times. A crew of VFX‌ junkies with a mutual affection for spending a Friday night slinging beers and making some screen magic.

And since then?

We’ve shaken hands with masters we thought we’d never even see in person. Landed moonshots we thought we’d never even try. Pulled off some pretty improbable feats and signed our names under quite a few impressive projects. We’ve left footprints in all corners of the globe and built a network spanning most of it.

If walls and keyboards could talk! 

I think of our first studio - the apartment we rented in Belgrade where we ate, slept and worked around the clock. I can see it all. Roars of laughter, all-nighters, junk food and being high on the fact you get to do something you love. Ridiculous deadlines and laughable budgets. Our starry eyes and the unmistakable sweet taste of making the impossible possible.

The images keep coming: united through the good and the bad, the thick and the thin, inside the studio and out in the real world. Led by a simple maxim, to always give our best. Weddings, funerals, birthdays and anniversaries mark the timeline like signs on a hiking trail as the memories unravel.

I’m guessing having enough time to think about something like this means you’ve made it to some kind of top.

Back in reality, I am surrounded by a snake of workstations lining the walls. I beam with pride. Each a tiny universe and mirror of its owner, these desks are nodes in a creative web capable of going unspeakable lengths and achieving incredible results. It’s intoxicating.

It’s also funny, because we didn’t really have an idea where we’re going to end up when we started this journey. Sure, we knew we were in for a wild ride – long one even – but the exact destination was pretty foggy to us.

We didn’t talk, plan or envision much; we were hungry and reaching for the stars. The only way to see what was in front was to go forward, so we did.

For almost fifteen years.

Now, with 2020 around the corner, I think it’s safe to say it is time for some 20-20 clarity. And for the first time in a long time, instead of racing to the finish line, I have some time to breathe before bracing for the next summit.

Wow, is all I can say.

It was a breathtakingly exciting, delightfully challenging and unbelievably lucky privilege to be witness to the birth and early life of Crater Studio.

I am thankful to whatever force, supernatural or not, made this possible. 

Most of all, I am thankful to those whose hard work it was built on and the ones keeping it growing still. 

That is why, this Christmas Eve, I am celebrating the incredible potential of what can be achieved when people join forces and push each other.

And come January… I’ll be back in the trenches, looking for even better ways to harness that fire.

Dream big and work hard in 2020,

I promise it will all be worth it.

Petar Jovovich
CEO & Co-Founder