Part Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves, part Goonies on skateboards, director Lije Sarki’s Concrete Kids tells the story of two nine-year-old boys from Venice, California who, for a contest, set off on a mission to cross Los Angeles on skateboards at night to reach the Staples Center by morning. Now streaming on Amazon Prime, the low-budget feature from The Orchard was shot by cinematographer Daron Keet with Panasonic VariCam LTs in available light mainly at night.
Victoria Logan has been named manager, versioning and accessibility at Éclair Media’s Strasbourg office. Logan is a graduate of the Cinema, Radio & TV School at Louvain University in Belgium and spent most of her career at Arte G.E.I.E in Strasbourg as production manager.
Éclair has hired Christophe Massie as the new head of its preservation division, effective immediately. An alliance has also been struck with Massie’s conservation and media management company, Orfeo. Under the agreement, Orfeo benefits from Éclair’s European sales and business services and relocates from its current premises to Éclair’s Paris-Vanves and Auxerre locations.
Creative media company Alkemy X has appointed Rich Shurtliff as director of information technology. Shurtliff, who brings deep experience in IT for visual effects, design and content production, will oversee the company’s information technology strategy, services and operations at its Philadelphia, New York, and Los Angeles studios. He succeeds the retiring Bob Pyle, who held the post for nearly 30 years.
With a unique improvisational acting style at the heart of the Netflix original film, Paddleton, capturing audio was of paramount concern for sound supervisor Daniel S. McCoy CAS, owner and operator of ToneMesa, Inc. “Sometimes, the team would go off to unplanned locations and I’d have to be ready to follow immediately,” says McCoy.
VFX Legion recently wrapped work on Ma, Blumhouse Productions’ new psychological horror film. The Burbank and British Columbia-based independent studio digitally mutilated and eviscerated characters, and augmented practical footage with computer-generated sequences, large-scale dynamics, new digital assets and composited shots that enhanced some of the movie’s most gruesome scenes.
The Cinema Technology Community has published a report about the causes of 3D crosstalk. According to the not-for-profit independent cinema technology organization, while no single piece of equipment (port glass, projector, 3D system, 3D screen and eye wear) is necessarily responsible for the introduction of 3D ghosting, any and all elements in the light path can have a contributing effect inside of a closed ecosystem.
Sound production for Columbia Pictures’ new action adventure Men in Black: International was completed by Sony Pictures Post Production Services on the studio lot in Culver City. Three-time Academy Award-winning sound designer/supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer Paul N. J. Ottosson led the sound team in delivering a host of ingenious sound elements to support the film’s colorful cast of characters, super-charged action scenes and extraterrestrial comedy.
Sound production for Her Smell¸ writer/director Alex Ross Perry’s new film about a self-destructive punk rocker named Becky Something (Elisabeth Moss) was completed at Goldcrest Post in New York. Ryan M. Price served as supervising sound editor, sound designer and re-recording mixer on the project, delivering a rich and nuanced soundtrack that brings to life a seedy rock club, an indie recording studio and other points along Becky’s road to ruin and eventual redemption.
The Netflix Film The Perfection, which was shot by cinematographer Vanja Černjul, ASC (The Deuce, Crazy Rich Asians), directed by Richard Shepard (The Matador, Dom Hemingway, Girls), and written by Eric C. Charmelo, Nicole Snyder, and Richard Shepard, follows the story of a troubled musical prodigy who seeks out the new star pupil of her former school with shocking consequences.
