The launch of The Perlin was announced last month... but they've been at it a while.

4 May 2026

Anthony Bloor, Fabian Frank and Carsten Keller joined forces as The Perlin last year but they decided to avoid a big launch announcement until their new company had accumulated a body of work worth shouting about. That moment has arrived.

Anthony Bloor, Fabian Frank and Carsten Keller have worked together for a long time and know each other extremely well so when they decided to join forces as The Perlin, their camaraderie was integral to the success of the new company. Earlier this year, the trio spoke to DAVID REVIEWS about the path that led them to where they are today and how their shared passion for great work lies at the foundation of their plans for the future.

It is rare for a company to announce its launch with a significant and impressive portfolio of work already made, but that's exactly what The Perlin has done.

Its three founders could easily have leaned into their previous work, but decided it would make a bolder statement of intent if they let everyone know about the projects they'd had the opportunity to work on following the softest of soft launches last year, and when you examine the projects to which they've made a contribution, you can understand their decision.

Asked why they named their company The Perlin, the trio reveal that is "a geeky inside joke". Perlin Noise, it turns out, was a significant invention in the world of CGI developed in the 1980s by Professor Ken Perlin, who went on to win an Academy Award for Technical Achievement in 1996.

Bloor then added that a Perlin is also "a cross between a peregrine falcon and a merlin" but that they only found that out after they'd made the decision to name the company after Ken Perlin's paradigm-shifting development... so ornithologists can calm down.

They can trace their knowledge of one another to the halcyon days of MPC, prior to its merger with The Mill. They left before the dramatic collapse of the post-production behemoth in February of last year, and say they were as surprised and shocked as everyone else when it happened, their decision to leave not having had anything to do with concerns about its future viability.

Like a lot of the recent start-ups in the post realm, the Perlin is, to some extent, an entity born of the pandemic, but they identify the merger between MPC and The Mill as the starting point of the conversations that eventually led to the formation of their company.

That said, they are keen to say how much they loved their time there, and this informs their surprise that it was so troubled: "Because we were involved in the 3D department for such a long time, we'd built a team around us that we'd hired as well. And we loved working with all those people because they were people that we'd brought in. I don't know whether there was other kind of things in other kind of parts of the business that were in a bad state, but we had quite a good relationship with the people [running it]."

As much as they maintain that they remained happy in their enclave at MPC, it is clear that the agility of a smaller company holds a great deal of appeal, and they speak with enthusiasm about staying in their lane. They value collaboration with other small companies specialising in other areas of post. As Fabian Frank puts it: "There's lots of opportunity for collaboration with other, for example, colour or editing or finishing houses now. And I think that shows a shift in the industry as well. You don't need these big kind of companies where it's all in one."

When asked whether, despite this declaration of the value of specialisation, they envisage broadening the scope of the offer in the future, they reveal that it's an open question for them. Partly because of an acknowledgement that they have already deviated from their original plans as unanticipated opportunities hove into view, partly on the back of their relationship with Leonie Ellis, who has facilitated unexpected introductions.

Even though a number of recent post-production start-ups have demonstrated the capability of small operations to compete with bigger entities, Bloor acknowledges that they were nonetheless asked whether or not they "were going to be able to do this?" as they pitched for work when they first got going.

They laugh when DAVID suggests it is a question to which the only possible answer is 'yes', but they are quick to emphasise that it was never a bluff. They understood their capability and were completely confident in their ability to deliver.

Carsten Keller adds that: "It was a bit of a shock when you've worked so long in big places and you've worked on all these massive projects like Burberry with Megaforce and people say, 'okay, but this is the past... what have you done at The Perlin?'

And within that observation, Keller is almost certainly revealing why the trio decided it was important to complete some significant projects before launching their company.

Given their track records, it was probably overly cautious of them, but, by waiting, they have certainly proven beyond any doubt that they are ready for any brief that’s thrown at them... and that's put them in a very strong position in a highly competitive market.