The Tau Films Story
Co-founded by John Hughes, Mandeep Singh, and Walt Jones in 2014, Tau Films is a global creative content and visual effects group. Our creative solutions encompass an ever-changing landscape of story, media, and content. We service a variety of clients in the global marketplace including high-end feature films, themed entertainment, VR, commercials, and television.
During John’s stewardship of Rhythm & Hues (R&H) Studios from 1987-2013, the company was renowned for its animation and creature work and won Academy Awards for Babe (1995), Golden Compass (2007), and Life of Pi (2012). It specialized in photo-real furry creatures, such as the tiger and the orangutan from the Life of Pi, the golden monkey from Golden Compass, and the capuchin (among many other animals) for the Night at the Museum (2006-2009) series of films. Rhythm & Hues was also an expert at set extensions, digital environments, and effects simulation.
Tau Films continues to advance the artistic heritage of R&H. To that end, it has a core creative and supervisory team in Los Angeles/North America, and accomplishes production work using a global team with facilities in Kuala Lumpur, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Vancouver, and Beijing. Tau Films also maintains international artistic talent.
Tau Films has worked on a number of themed entertainment projects including an attraction for the Warner Bros. Studio Tour London – The Making of Harry Potter, The Forbidden Caves in Bobbejaanland, Belgium (under the direction of Super78), and the Ferrari: Racing Legends experience at PortAventura World in Spain. In addition, Tau created VFX for Super78’s The Lost Temple, a 4-D ride film at Movie Park Germany (MPG), Bottrop, Germany. For their work on The Lost Temple, Super78 and Tau were nominated for the “Outstanding Visual Effects in a Special Venue Project” award at the 13th Annual VES Awards.
Tau also created the VFX for public service announcements with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jackie Chan, and worked with Amitabh Bachchan on a commercial for APL Apollo. Additional commercials and internal works include projects for: Intel, North Face, Pepsi, Vivo Nex, Webank, Interac, ASUS ROG, and Xiaomi’s MiMax Alpha Smartphone. Finally, Tau created virtual reality (VR) experiences for the producers of The Walking Dead.
Tau led animation and VFX (including the Port Master, as well as the Red Monster and Giant Hand) for Weiran Li’s The Yinyang Master (2021). Tau also created animation and VFX for a number of feature films including Baahubali: The Beginning (2015), Everest (2015), 2.0 (2018), Crazy Alien (2019), Primal (2019), Skyfire (2019), and The Battle at Lake Changjin (2021).
The Tau Films Pipeline Team was awarded the 6th Autodesk Shotgun Shotty Award at Siggraph 2019.