Even in a job as cool as special effects rendering for Avengers and a multitude of other Hollywood box office hits, there are still challenges and pivots necessary to survival. The constant conversation happening around our rapidly changing business and technology ecosystem has everything to do with adoption, and that is for one very simple reason: We aren’t changing as rapidly as the technology is advancing. We aren’t adopting at the pace necessary to keep up. Well, some of us are…and in that category of early adopters and technological innovators is Chris Edwards, co-founder and CEO of The Third Floor.

Fifteen Years in the Making

The Third Floor is a pre-visualization, post-visualization, and virtual reality company based in Los Angeles which was founded by a group of artists who worked together on Star Wars: Episode III–Revenge of the Sith at Lucasfilm. The company was named after the location where they worked. The Third Floor’s name-dropping capacity is wide. Their client list reads like a who’s-who in big business, with heavy-hitters like Disney, Nissan, HBO, Marvel Studios, Sony Pictures, Samsung, Pepsi, and plenty more, but this success didn’t happen overnight.

Growing into the Process

Edwards talked about how their first five years was a constant effort of trying to make everything work, making sure the next job came before the next round of payouts were due, and just keeping the lights on, so to speak. The second five years was what Edwards calls the optimization and systematization of what he and his team had built in the first five years. It was during this time that Edwards became a “real CEO” by expanding his capacity into duties that were less about keeping the lights on and more about turning new lights on. The Third Floor consciously focuses on keeping quality, creativity, innovation, and a strong culture at the center of what they are building.

Creativity Runs Deep