On a clear winter day in West Hollywood, a quiet agreement brought two creative worlds together. CREE8, a cloud production studio platform built for editors, artists, and producers, announced the acquisition of PRODUCER – Maker Machina, a Swiss-born production management platform created by filmmaker and director Xaver Walser and technologist Paul-Emile Joëssel.
On the surface, it is a straightforward acquisition. Behind it lies a longer story about two founders who set out to fix the day-to-day pain of production work, and a cloud studio that wanted to connect planning, production, and post in one continuous environment.
For CREE8, PRODUCER represents smart, intuitive production management and a clear respect for how creative teams actually move through their days. For PRODUCER, joining CREE8 means plugging its planning and coordination engine directly into a powerful cloud studio, so teams can move from first outline to final export without stepping outside a shared workspace.
To see why this moment matters, it helps to start where PRODUCER began: with a filmmaker who was tired of seeing crews drown in details.
Our goal has always been to empower creative professionals across every sector.
Paul-Emile Joessel, Co-Founder and CTO of PRODUCER
To do that effectively we needed a partner with both scale and ambition. CREE8 gives
us that opportunity, and this next chapter will take our technology further than ever.”
From Set Life To Software: Xaver’s Problem
Before PRODUCER existed, Xaver Walser lived the same reality as countless directors and producers. Every new project began with optimism and a blank slate. Very soon, that slate filled with scattered documents and half-updated files.
There were call sheets in one folder, budgets in another, and shot lists living in spreadsheet tabs with names only one person understood. Conversations about casting and locations happened in long email threads, then jumped into messaging apps. Versions of scripts moved around with confusing filenames. No one could see the entire production clearly at once.
“PRODUCER was built to make a real difference for creators. Joining CREE8 helps us
Xaver Walser, Co-Founder and CEO of PRODUCER
reach more users and move faster on our shared goal of removing technical barriers
so people can focus on being creative
Xaver knew that this chaos was not a sign of incompetence. It was the natural side effect of trying to hold everything together with tools that were never made for production. Still, it frustrated him. He began to wonder what would happen if the production brain lived in one place, designed by people who actually understood set life.
Instead of shrugging and moving on, he decided to do something about it.
Finding A Partner In Structure: Paul-Emile Joëssel
Xaver’s strength was creative leadership and understanding the rhythm of real shoots. To turn that insight into software, he needed a partner who could think in systems and architecture.
He found that match in Paul-Emile Joëssel.
Where Xaver saw pain points on set, Paul-Emile saw patterns that software could handle. Duplicate data. Repeated emails. Information trapped inside files that did not talk to each other. He began to sketch how a platform could tie all of that into one living model of a production, where a decision in one place would ripple to the others automatically.
Together, they founded Maker Machina and began building PRODUCER. It was not a glossy startup story at first. It was two people working closely with small crews, listening to what actually broke during production, and adjusting the product week by week.
Their early goal was simple. A producer should be able to open PRODUCER and see everything that matters for a project in one place: people, tasks, schedules, scenes, assets, locations, and deliveries. A change to the shoot day should update call sheets and timelines. A new deliverable should immediately be tied to a plan, not scribbled in a notebook.
Growing From Side Project To Production Backbone
The first teams to try PRODUCER were close to the founders. Independent filmmakers, small commercial outfits, and content studios that operated on tight timelines and slim margins. They were not buying “digital transformation.” They were looking for something that would make tomorrow’s shoot less stressful.
They used PRODUCER on one project as an experiment. Then they used it on the next one. Then they recommended it to friends and collaborators. Word spread through conversations and shared credits, not big campaigns.
As more teams adopted the platform, its role shifted.
What began as a helpful tool became a quiet backbone. Producers built their calendars in it. Coordinators lived in it during pre-production. In-house brand teams began to use it to plan photo shoots, social campaigns, and multi-market content pushes. The user base grew into the thousands, then tens of thousands.
With that growth came new demands. Enterprise teams arrived with stricter requirements. They asked about security, compliance, access control, and how PRODUCER would fit into existing IT infrastructure. Maker Machina responded with the discipline of a company that wanted to be taken seriously. Certifications, single sign-on, and strong data practices followed. PRODUCER kept its approachable surface while gaining the strength to serve large, complex organizations.
Throughout this growth, the core remained the same. Xaver and Paul-Emile did not allow the platform to drift away from its original purpose. It still had to feel like a tool built by people who knew what it meant to lose a day to confusion on set.
Meeting CREE8: Planning Finds Its Cloud Studio
While PRODUCER was becoming a trusted production hub, CREE8 was taking shape on the other side of the workflow.
CREE8 focused on turning the cloud into a ready-to-go studio for editors, VFX artists, colorists, and other specialists. It is a destination for co-creation, with high-performance workstations, scalable storage, and secure collaboration tools that can be spun up without months of hardware planning. It was built for media, entertainment, and gaming teams who needed heavy processing power and global access.
PRODUCER strengthens CREE8 by expanding our integrated workflow across
Lisa Watts, CEO of CREE8
planning, production, post, and delivery. Together, we’re giving teams a single
connected environment that reduces handoffs, speeds execution, and keeps work
secure across multi-cloud.
If PRODUCER understood how to plan and coordinate work, CREE8 understood how to execute it at scale once the footage and assets started flowing.
The two stories crossed at NAB – The National Association of Broadcasters trade show, when CREE8 and PRODUCER announced an integration. Project data from PRODUCER could feed into CREE8. The same structure that guided pre-production and production could shape how projects appeared inside the cloud studio.
For teams using both platforms, the effect was immediate. A producer could build and manage a project in PRODUCER and know that, when it reached post, the editors would see something familiar: a project that already understood its own structure.
It did not take long for both sides to see that this connection could become something more permanent.
The Acquisition: One Connected Creative Environment
Today, that idea has been formalized into an acquisition. CREE8 has acquired PRODUCER – Maker Machina and welcomed Xaver Walser and Paul-Emile Joëssel into the team.
The intent is clear. CREE8 offers a fully connected creative studio in the cloud, from planning through production and into post. PRODUCER brings the planning and coordination engine. CREE8 brings the cloud studio muscle. Together, they can offer one environment instead of a patchwork of tools.
The values also align. PRODUCER has always stood for smart and intuitive production management, and for a grounded understanding of how creative teams actually run their projects. CREE8 has positioned itself as a co-creation platform that treats infrastructure as something that should disappear into the background so people can focus on creating.
For existing PRODUCER users, the platform they rely on remains, now with a stronger engine behind it and deeper connections into cloud-based finishing. For CREE8 customers, a missing piece drops into place: a production management layer built by a filmmaker-founder and his technical partner who have lived the pain they are solving.
This acquisition is not the end of the story for either company. It is the next chapter for two founders who turned production frustration into a platform, and for a cloud studio that wants to give creative teams one continuous path from the first idea to the final master.
