After 12 years in business The Butchery and Refinery in Melbourne and Sydney announces closure
The Butchery & Refinery in Melbourne and Sydney is closing its doors after 12 years in business.
The sad news was announced today in a company statement:
It is with a tinge of sadness that we announce the closure of The Butchery & Refinery in Melbourne and Sydney.
After what has been an incredible twelve years creating fine cuts and refined work with many lovely and talented people, its time to say goodbye.
We would like to thank all of our clients and partners for your support and the incredible opportunities we’ve had to deliver such a vast array of creative and award winning work for production companies, agencies, and clients around Australia, New Zealand, the UK, USA, Asia and other parts of the world.
To our team, built completely organically over the years, we’d like to say thanks publicly again for your friendship, dedication and commitment. You all truly made our small humble company what it was – a family – and we wish you all the very best for the next step in your respective journeys.
We’d also like to recognise all the previous staff or creative talent that have been part of that family in earlier years. We’ve had a large number of assistants go on to successful careers, junior editors become senior editors, or flame artists, support staff grow into amazing producers and key personnel end up in production, as colourists, or as film directors.
All at The Butchery and Refinery have been humbled by the friendship, trust, and the many and varied creative partnerships we have built over the years. The messages of well wishing and congratulations on the end of an era we’ve been receiving over the past week have been lovely to read and hear.
As the partners, producers, editors, flame artists, assistants and support staff move on to new projects, businesses, and interests, you’ll still see us all out in the industry in various capacities and we certainly hope to continue these same connections well into the future, albeit in a different guise, space or workplace. We’ll be adding a list of personal emails to our website in the coming days if you would like to get in touch with someone directly.
Thanks again, it’s been our pleasure.
Jack, Rohan, Eugene, Drew and all at The Butchery and Refinery
As we draw to a close we would like to give clients the opportunity to request any Masters or Submasters you may require. Please make all requests to info@thebutchery.com.au by April 30th, and note that no further material will be available after May 17th.
For any additional enquiries regarding projects in production or pending, or further project revisions, please contact info@thebutchery.com.au
25 Comments
Internal post killed the video star.
Bye guys. Sorry to see you go.
Great team, a real shame. Hope Ro is freelance or ends up somewhere like The Editors.
Very sad news indeed. Lots of good memories, friends and great ads at Eades Place.
no better place to work.
This new model of internal agency editing is going to hit most of the big and small post houses.
Unfortunately with clients/ agencies racing to the bottom in both price and quality isn’t going to change anytime soon.
The craft of editing/ storytelling is being lost for rubbish content being produced/ shot and edited by a 21yr old kid.
Hopefully common sense will prevail when the punters stop watching the rubbish content being produced and sales start to drop.
Unfortunately i can for see that’s a long time away.
Sorry to hear about this loss.
Yep….at a time like this you just want to say a big Thank You to all the half arsed attempts at agency in-house post – Bravo.
This ones for you.
Your absolute relentless crusade for making stuff cheaper and then thinking it looked even half as good as what independent companies could do.
To all the account teams who tell themselves “whatever it takes” to keep a client onside and onboard by telling them their print budget will work fine to produce tvcs. To the all the agency producers who couldn’t care less about a treatment just “we need this to be cheaper”
And finally that timeless email from every agency when you are chasing an overdue payment of “we can’t pay you until we have been paid by the client”…
Yep – Bravo Australian agency land… take a bow.
Sad and a true reflection of what is happening in the world of craft. Good luck to the team and I hope they all do great things in the future..
Blame digital. Blame content. Blame agency owners who pay their creatives SFA.
But most of all, blame production companies.
We used to joke about production companies having in-house chefs.
Then we joked about them still driving Porsche / Maseratis.
Now we joke about them having long lunches on a Friday.
There’s a new wave of untalented, but hungry DIYers coming through and it’s fucking everything. But hey, maybe this will lead to some kind of creative renaissance down the track.
top shelf people and work. always. you’ll be missed. thank you for your service.
You’re a clueless idiot if you think it’s the agencies who want to do things on the cheap. The Butchery and Refinery are amazing and we’d use them every single day of the week if we could. The truth is, the industry (and budgets) are changing. Adapt, or be left behind like the winging old fool you come across as.
These guys were amazing,
I would consider a few people at the butchery good friends and I would consider everyone who edits there exceptional editors. When I worked in Sydney I would frequently compete and frequently lose against them, but we would never lose to them because of cost. We would lose because they were better for the job. It’s sad when something exceptional closes, the industry will be poorer because of it.
If budgets are changing, which they have due to agencies setting bad then even worse precidents, maybe you should keep your concepts and executions within the Client budget and not over promise something that your producers struggle with and that always end up never quite being right?
So maybe you are the clueless idiot that doesn’t understand the concept of writing to the client budget or indeed what craft is.
But then internal post charges are nearly the same rate as external rates. It is all head hours and revenue for the agency bottom line. These days its become more important to put it in the agency bottom line than on the screen. Craft is dying and seldom seen these days. There a fewer in the industry every year that know and understand how to create craft. It doesn’t take big bucks, it takes knowledge, passion and experience.
My question is why do CCO,ECD’s and CD’s allow this to happen?
Hey suck-up, embryonic agency producer.. you and your creatives beer budgets and champagne expectations did this.
along with every agency principal who thinks in-house is best then wonders why all their new stuff sucks.
Job after job i see providers being bled dry with incompetent agency producing that badly manages the process them piles overage after overage in production and post and music’s lap and they all complain they’re going out the door because of chitty agencies and their scared shitless spineless producers who NEVER pass on a single dollar of client or agency created overages.
this is why you can’t and never will again have nice things.
This industry is dying and you just keep stabbing away.
It’s the young self taught Agency Producers and the spineless Accounts Service that allow the industry to bleed.
None of them manage their creatives or clients expectations. They constantly drop the Obama slogan “Yes we can”, nobody sets them straight and tells them what it really and truly take.
I’ll see your Hogarths and raise you a Prodigious or a Flare ….
What a dumb thing to say..”agencies aren’t to blame”… yes they are sunshine. They most certainly are.
The work that came out of this post house was easily some of the best in the world.
You can’t argue with that fact.
Literally the most talented people in Australia have either worked for or had work go through the Butchery.
For it not be able to survive breaks my heart.
Most can only dream of having even a tiny fraction of the creativity and passion that came out of this place.
And now it’s gone.
It’s not just clients/agencies/production companies that have destroyed post. Hardware and software toys are more accessible. Companies like Blackmagic Design have reduced the barriers to entry and created a toxic environment for creativity. Now things like Flame\Avid\Adobe are super cheap as software suppliers race to the bottom as well as they try and catch BMDesign at the bottom, they are forcing a race to the bottom in creativity.
RIP Butchery/Refinery, alone with them dies a little bit more Australian creativity, just another nail.
I wonder…..which will be the first agency to fall…..
I think you’re missing the point
It’s not the tools
A lot of creative industries have opened their doors with cheaper methods and practices. That doesn’t mean the talent pool has somehow grown exponentially.
There are conscious efforts to eliminate talent in Australia.
That’s what’s happening.
I’m not saying cheaper tools land in talented hands, the opposite actually. Cheaper tools land in inexperienced cheaper hands to the detriment of talent.
It comes down to poor management, point the fingers where ever you want. They just didn’t change with the times.
Cut some of my best work at the butchery. Jack is a master. Be keen to know where he lands next.
Awesome people and such awesome work. Good luck everyone.
After so many years cutting some of the best gigs out of that ol’ Melbs terrace… whatever the reason the doors are closing… I’ve got many fond memories and life long friends that I’m keeping! Best of luck to me old crew! m~
Aw man, such bad news. The best commercial of my 20 year ad-life was cut here.
When we filmed our spot we thought we had something special.
Then Butchery & Refinery brought the secret sauce and confirmed it and then some.
RIP to this place and vale the terraces of talent.
I wish I could have brought more gems like that ad to your door,
but it’s hard in adland when you’re doing so many cheap-ass disposable vids.
They were beneath your brilliance, I’m sure I’m not alone in this sentiment.
Gutted Words Guy.