3P Studio: ten years of re-imagining
For a decade 3P Studio has stayed ahead of the curve by constantly re-imagining what is possible. Ten years on, that instinct is still what defines the studio.
The studio, founded by Haley McDonald on an editorial foundation, has grown into a group with footprints across Brisbane, Sydney and New Zealand. She has steered it through a decade that has not been short of weather: economic upheaval, a global pandemic that stopped production dead, and now the arrival of AI.
Each time, McDonald’s instinct has been the same, which is to look for the opportunity in the disruption rather than the damage, and then move on it early.
“I’ve had everything imaginable thrown at me over the last decade. Ten years on, the thing that still gets me is the work and the people,” said McDonald (pictured below left). “I can look back across the decade and be genuinely proud of what has come out of this studio, but what I am prouder of is who we have made it with. The clients who have trusted us with their most important campaigns, some of them for years on end, and the people in this building who keep raising the bar on each other. That is the actual achievement. Our longevity is a result of those things.”
Staying ahead has meant refusing to stay put. 3P Studio began as a post-production house and has become a full end-to-end creative operation working across the entire spectrum. The studio has consistently taken risks with its own trajectory and with the craft itself, backing bold creative and surrounding itself with exceptionally talented collaborators rather than playing the safe hand.
That appetite is visible in the studio’s recent work. “One of the standout jobs of the year for us was Golden Goose for Super Members Council, with Thinkerbell and MOFA,” said McDonald.
“It was an enormous team effort built off a brilliant creative idea, and a hugely collaborative one, with director Jae Morrison and the incredible creative team at Thinkerbell. For us it also meant continuing to explore and build out our hybrid AI visual effects worflows and methodologies. The whole job was underpinned by real excitement about craft and about finding new pathways into familiar work. Compliance Cassowary for Visible with Cocogun carried that straight on, pioneering new production and post-production approaches and pushing hard at what everyone assumed may have been unacheivable.”
The most recent chapter of that growth has been Sydney. The studio opened in Surry Hills last year and the welcome from the local industry was immediate and genuinely generous. Senior Offline Editor Luey Conway (pictured below right) heads up the Sydney studio, and a year on it already feels like home: “The 3P ethos is that traditional craft and storytelling are at the centre of what we do – the Sydney office is no different and clients are loving it! We offer a slightly different vibe in Sydney with our large and light filled suites and airy office that creates a great environment to get the creative juices flowing,” says Conway.
Ask McDonald what sits ahead and the answer arrives with a wry acknowledgement of the obvious: “Two letters carrying an enormous amount of weight right now,” she said. “AI is unavoidable in every conversation, and it has been the undercurrent running beneath the whole industry this year. We have chosen to meet it with optimism, and the question we keep asking is how we use it to raise creative and technical expectations rather than lower them. AI has genuinely disrupted how and what post production has been for many years, and has compounded and fast tracked what has been an age old problem, which is shrinking budgets against growing expectations. That is the challenge in 2026. As a studio we’ve developed our own tools, technology and workflows which continue to put us in good position to drive an even bigger appetite for bold creative and real craft.”
The studio has leaned into that position hard enough to spawn a Saas company from it. Neosframe.ai was built to handle creative rollout at volume, absorbing the content explosion that every brand is now contending with at the same time handing hours back to the artists who should be spending them on the craft.
None of which works without the people, and McDonald is unambiguous that this is where the last ten years actually live. The studio’s growth has been built on hiring exceptional talent and then giving it room, and the standard now sets itself, with long term tenures from artists who are now setting the bar for everyone coming in behind them.
“You cannot be the best without the best people, and we have been extraordinarily lucky on that front for ten years,” said McDonald. “That is why I am so optimistic about what comes next. The tools will keep changing and we will keep pulling the studio apart to make the most of them, but the talent and the appetite in this building is the strongest it has ever been. The future is genuinely bright.”
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