EngineLab partners with Amazon Web Services (AWS)

EngineLab partners with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help creative teams reduce the time needed to create cloud workflows for their top-priority projects from months to days.

In a rapidly evolving media and entertainment landscape, agility and scalability are essential. As studios navigate industry volatility and increasingly distributed creative teams, cloud-based workflows are no longer a futuristic concept, but rather a competitive advantage.

The founders of EngineLab, which launched in early 2025, recognize the growing need for industry-specific expertise in cloud transformation for studios. Sam Reid He is no stranger to trying new things. While CTO of Untold Studios, he led the company's efforts from its inception in 2018 to fully launch into the AWS cloud in just six weeks. This turned Untold in the first creative studio that operated entirely in the cloud. In early 2025, Reid decided to create his own company and was joined by his colleagues and co-founders. Daniel Goller and Matt Herman, with which they founded EngineLab.

The trio realized that many artists needed help managing the complexities of their digital infrastructure. None of them could imagine the call they would receive after just a few days in business. On Friday, February 21, 2025, Technicolor began notifying its employees that operations would close the following week. The managers of one of Technicolor's commercial visual effects studio subsidiaries, The Mill, they decided to take advantage of this opportunity to create a new company and maintain the projects they were working on. The new company, ARC Creative, had 72 hours to get its infrastructure up and running or risk costly delays. That's when the phone rang and the EngineLab team received their first project.

"We started talking to the ARC team and discussed what they wanted to do and how they wanted to do it. We soon realized that the Flame workflow for finishing and visual effects was the most important one to get going. It was the most delicate workflow and had the most interactivity with the client," explains Reid. "So our mission was to create this workflow and get it up and running in the cloud as quickly as possible, which we did in three days. On Friday we got approval and by Monday everything was up and running."

EngineLab enabled ARC Creative deliver client projects without missing a beat. They leveraged the team's experience in creating similar workflows, along with using a number of cloud-native services, such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) for graphics workstations and Amazon FSx for scalable storage.
“EngineLab is about empowering creatives to focus on their work without being distracted by technical obstacles,” Reid says. «We spent seven years solving cloud challenges firsthand. “Now we are packaging that experience to accelerate the journey of others.”

AWS and generative AI

EngineLab relies heavily on AWS infrastructure and services to deliver fast, scalable and profitable solutions to your clients.

“We have extensive experience with AWS, which helps us know exactly what the services do and how to use them,” Reid notes. "This allows us to advise clients on when to use certain services and, in some cases, when not to use them in favor of another service or solution. That judgment, based on real-world experience, is what allows us to launch fully operational studies in a matter of days, instead of months."

“It's great to see specialty partners like EngineLab emerging and becoming stronger in the AWS Partner Network,” he says. Nina Walsh, Global Head of Business Development for Media, Entertainment, Gaming, and Sports at AWS. "Having worked closely with Sam for five years, I have been inspired by his dedication to advancing the industry using the power of the cloud, while driving innovation in the creative industries. EngineLab's extensive experience and ability to accelerate cloud adoption will be invaluable to studios looking to modernize their workflows and adopt cutting-edge solutions on AWS."

The EngineLab team also highlights the importance of infrastructure as code (IaC), which leverages AWS CloudFormation to create repeatable, auditable and scalable implementations in several regions. This codified approach ensures that studies can scale quickly across different geographies as project needs evolve.

In addition to using AWS for its core infrastructure, EngineLab is a pioneer in Integration of generative AI in creative workflows. The company takes advantage Amazon Bedrock to power AI-based tools that streamline traditionally tedious post-production tasks (such as adjusting sightlines in VFX shots or creating shot segmentation and depth mapping). By automating repetitive, non-creative tasks, EngineLab allows artists to focus on the work that matters most.

"AI is not intended to replace artists, but rather to speed up their workflows so they can spend more time being creative, Reid emphasizes. "We use Amazon Bedrock and will continue to use this service whenever we can."

EngineLab also uses AWS Generative AI services to develop personalized AI assistants integrated into popular collaboration tools like Slack and Teams. This gives studios new ways to improve productivity without disrupting existing workflows.

AI and scalability

Although still in its infancy, EngineLab is already generating significant interest among studios eager to modernize their technology stacks. By combining the scalability of the cloud with the acceleration of AI, EngineLab helps creative teams weather the ups and downs of a volatile market. The possibility of expanding resources when projects increase and reducing them when work decreases helps preserve operating capital without compromising performance.

"In an industry that is naturally irregular and prone to disruption, cloud technology is the best way to maintain agility. After more than seven years working with AWS, we have built a strong relationship based on customer focus and innovation. With AWS, studios can access the latest hardware, optimize costs and remain resilient no matter what comes their way," Reid concludes.