In 2007, a father-and-son filmmaking team set out to create an independent action-adventure feature called Knights of Newgate. With no formal training and no studio support, they attempted something far beyond the typical scope of a home-grown production: a fully greenscreen film with over 1,000 VFX shots, built entirely in CG on two consumer-grade machines.
The project included large-scale environments, vehicle chases, creature sequences, destruction simulations, and multi-period storytelling across Medieval London, modern London, and Medieval Jerusalem. The ambition was extraordinary—but the tools available at the time were not.
After more than a decade of work, countless crashes, catastrophic data losses, and hardware held together with literal paperclips, the film was completed and distributed. The team understood its limitations. The technology simply couldn’t match the scale of their vision.
That experience became the catalyst for everything that followed.
As Will transitioned into the games industry, he discovered Unreal Engine—and realised that the real-time workflows he had always needed finally existed. Modern rendering, virtual production techniques, and AI-assisted tools opened the door to rebuilding Knights of Newgate at a level that was previously impossible.
But the challenge remained: 1,000+ shots still requires a robust, automated pipeline.
This led directly to the creation of Define:
A production-ready pipeline orchestration system designed for small teams, independent creators, and anyone working across large shot counts.
Define: enables users to load an entire film or project and process every shot through a node-based pipeline. File operations, versioning, backups, metadata, asset reuse, and inter-application handoff are all automated. Artists focus on creative decisions while Define: handles the technical infrastructure.
We are using the full rebuild of Knights of Newgate as a real-world validation environment to refine Define:, stress-test it, and ensure it can support complex, multi-application workflows at scale. Once complete, we will release a Define: Community Version on Fab, along with comprehensive tutorials documenting the entire rebuild process—giving the Epic community a practical, production-tested pipeline they can adopt and extend.
In parallel, we will use Define: to repurpose Knights of Newgate’s rebuilt assets into a PC game for release on Steam, demonstrating how a unified pipeline can support both film and game production from a single asset base.
Our mission is simple:
Rebuild the film. Build the pipeline. Share the tools. Empower creators.