When a thousand zombies limp through a barren wasteland in the hit series The Walking Dead, only the first few are portrayed by real actors—the rest, all fake. Philadelphia-based creative content company Alkemy X provided the “Hollywood magic” to create the horde of zombies, each unique and different, through the use of computer-generated imagery.
Similarly, when Midge Maisel performed her standup routine before a packed USO audience in the third season opener of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, the majority of excited United States servicepeople were courtesy of the computer-generated magic of Alkemy X. And locally, in the Mid-Atlantic region, Alkemy X creates television commercials and content for clients ranging from the Pennsylvania Lottery and Comcast, to the Philadelphia Phillies, Eagles and Union, to the State of New Jersey Tourism. Alkemy X not only creates ads but also supplies the live-action production team that shoots them, and then handles the post-production, such as editing, color and sound.
“I’m essentially running five different companies under one roof,” said Justin Wineburgh OPC ’90, Alkemy X’s president and CEO. The company calls itself a “global creative partner,” working with movie studios, television networks, independent filmmakers and some of the biggest brands in the world. They can produce a multimillion-dollar Super Bowl commercial just as easily as a spot for a local healthcare system. Their reach is global, with offices in New York, Los Angeles, Vancouver and Amsterdam, but their headquarters is in the heart of Center City Philadelphia.
While alchemists were alleged to turn base metals into gold, Alkemy X turns creative ideas and concepts into audiovisual gold, Wineburgh says. As for the X, that is filled in differently for each project. “Whatever the unknown ‘X’ may be to ensure that a project exceeds expectations, we can find and deliver it.”
There has been a bit of alchemy in Wineburgh’s own career, as he morphed from a college engineering major to partner in a law firm to head of a large entertainment company. He entered Penn Charter in sixth grade. A singer, musician and lacrosse player, his favorite memories stem from physics with Tom Katman, math with T. David Kuehn and Bill Goulding, Spanish with Chuck Cooper and Gus Puleo, and English with John Schug.
Wineburgh majored in electrical engineering at Lafayette College on the theory that unlike English or politics, it seemed like a subject he could not eventually teach himself. Inspired by a family friend who was a federal prosecutor in Miami, he turned in a different direction and decided to go to law school at Widener University, where he was an editor of the Law Review.
Early in his law career, Wineburgh handled insurance cases and commercial litigation matters for the law firm Cozen O’Connor before an old classmate turned him in yet another direction. Jeff “J.C.” Spink OPC ’90, a Hollywood producer and talent manager, asked Wineburgh to handle some litigation stemming from production of the movie The Ring. Wineburgh shuttled back and forth to Los Angeles for several years, eventually resolving the case favorably, but he had also stumbled upon a new line of practice. “Like many things in life,” he joked, “all you have to do is do one thing great once and you’re suddenly an expert.”
Most entertainment cases, Wineburgh notes, are just another kind of legal matter with a different gloss, whether that be negotiating a contract, settling an employment dispute, protecting a copyright or handling a real estate transfer. Cozen O’Connor did all those things, and so, over the next decade and more, Wineburgh developed and launched the firm’s media, entertainment and sports law division. After attending the Sundance Film Festival in 2005, for example, he realized there was an underserved market advising makers of independent films. He began shuttling to Los Angeles, Florida and elsewhere—“collecting bar exams,” he laughs—expanding the firm’s practice into the geographic hubs of the entertainment industry.
One of his clients was the small post-production company that is now Alkemy X. Then called Shooters Post & Transfer, founded in 1981 in Philadelphia, it produced some of the early unscripted reality TV shows, including Restaurant: Impossible for the Food Network and Dragnificent! for TLC. As its outside counsel, one of Wineburgh’s jobs was to ensure that the production company delivered shows “free and clear” of any legal snags that might hold up distribution or otherwise give rise to liability. In 2014, Shooters Post & Transfer changed its name to Alkemy X, and a year later, after a period of shakeup in the industry, the company’s board asked Wineburgh to take over as president and CEO.
At first, he turned them down, comfortable in his law practice. But as he considered the opportunity, his thinking changed. “There’s a lot of safety in staying on a merry-go-round,” he recalled. “But there’s also a lot of exhilaration if we have the guts to put on a seatbelt and jump on a rollercoaster. The company was in trouble, and I was willing to bet on myself that I could turn it around.”
That bet has slowly paid off, as the last eight years have been disruptive for both the world as a whole, and the entertainment industry in particular. Business was only beginning to return to normal after the Covid-19 pandemic when the Hollywood Writers’ Guild strike started, followed by the Screen Actors’ Guild strike. A large backlog of projects is at last getting back into production, Wineburgh said. Beyond that, there is the ongoing challenge of learning how to make the best use of new technologies such as artificial intelligence.
If Wineburgh has a mantra for Alkemy X, it is to always exceed expectations and be at the forefront of the industry. “We have to be the absolute best we can possibly be at all times,” he said. “There’s a line of people around the block who want our jobs.”
– Mark Bernstein '79