If negotiators for the feature/tv studios, the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) need any further reminder of the toll exacted by a strike, all they need do is look back to last year’s six-month strike against the ad industry by the actors’ unions. According to SAG figures, that strike caused a drop in spot-generated member earnings of more than $100 million in 2000 as compared to 1999. This translated into SAG’s lowest earnings year since ’96….Director Thor Freudenthal has come aboard Los Angeles-based Slo.Graffiti, a satellite of Palomar Pictures, Los Angeles….Director Eric E. Fitzpatrick has joined bicoastal Cohn+Company….The Music Video Production Association has named nominees in 26 categories for its 10th annual MVPA Awards. Nominated in the director of the year category were Sophie Muller of Oil Factory, Hollywood; Paul Hunter of bicoastal HSI Productions and Mars Media; Joseph Kahn of Palomar Pictures; Wayne Isham of Los Angeles-headquartered A Band Apart; and Garth Jennings of Hammer & Tongs, repped via bicoastal Anonymous. The MVPA Awards ceremony is set for May 16, in Los Angeles….Santa Monica-based music/sound design shop Conning, Hammers+Klok has been amicably dissolved by its three partners, who want to pursue separate paths. Although the plans of composers/sound designers Rico Conning and Jon Klok weren’t known at press time, composer/sound designer Johannes Hammers told SHOOT that he is now working as a satellite of music/sound design house Chris Bell and Company, West Los Angeles, under the name The Hammers Project….Meanwhile, audio mixing shop Mike Recording Services, a member of the Chris Bell family of companies, has launched a visual effects division, Sky.efx, bringing on Flame artist Mark Leiss, formerly of The Post Group, West Los Angeles. Sky.efx is on Mike Recording Services’ West L.A. premises.…Mill Film, London, picked up the best visual effects Oscar earlier this week for Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. The award was presented to Mill Film visual effects supervisors Tim Burke and Rob Harvey, physical effects supervisor Neil Corbould, and John Nelson—a freelancer who was the epic’s overall effects supervisor. (Harvey left Mill Film and has since co-launched Lola Post Production, London, a visual effects house specializing in high-end spots and film work.) Mill Film was created in ’97 as a partnership between London commercials facility The Mill and British film directors Tony and Ridley Scott….Father and Daughter, directed by Michael Dudok de Wit (who’s repped for spots by Acme Filmworks, Hollywood), won the Oscar for best animated short….
