Focus Shifts To Internet; Effects/Animation Operation Streamlined.
Once known simply as Click 3X San Francisco and then Click 3X Construct, the studio now carries a new banner: Construct Click 3X San Francisco. The name change underscores a change in focus for the Bay Area facility, with the Internet looming larger than the traditional broadcast market.
Earlier this year (SHOOT, 3/12/99, p. 23), Click 3X’s New York headquartered parent company IllusionFusion (IF!) acquired Construct Internet Design Co., San Francisco, and merged it into post/effects facility Click 3X San Francisco, forming an integrated digital studio that combined talent in both the broadcast and Internet markets.
But the lesson learned from that integrated existence was that the San Francisco market generated largely Internet-related business for the studio. Spot and longform activity was increasing exponentially on the West Coast—but for Click 3X Los Angeles (based in Santa Monica), rather than Click 3X San Francisco. That was the assessment of Phil Price, New York-based president/creative director and a founding father of the Click 3X family, which encompasses digital effects/animation and design facilities in New York, Atlanta, Santa Monica and San Francisco.
Although Claudia Carlson, executive VP/manager of Click 3X San Francisco, recently exited the company, Price said that the studio still retains some animation/effects resources; he specifically cited animation director Jamee Houk. Price acknowledged, however, that the San Francisco shop has streamlined its animation/effects operation and has decided to focus largely on the Internet market via the Construct team and infrastructure.
Carlson, a mainstay on the San Francisco studio scene, was exploring her options at press time. She joined Click 3X San Francisco two years ago (SHOOT, 10/3/97, p. 1). Prior to that, Carlson spent seven years at post/effects firm Western Images, San Francisco. Her last position at Western was director of sales and marketing. But most of her Western tenure was with its now defunct sister company Good Pictures, an editorial boutique she helped launch as executive producer in ’90.
Price noted that the key executives at Construct Click 3X San Francisco are president Lisa Goldman and general manager Cathi Cox. Prior to becoming part of the IF! Group, Construct was headed by Goldman and Cox who served as president/ CEO and COO, respectively.
Houk and her team can accommodate spots, other broadcast projects and longform assignments at the San Francisco shop. Also, those clients can tap into Click 3X Los Angeles which is an hour by plane from the Bay Area, noted Price. Click 3X Los Angeles’ ensemble of talent is headed by senior partners Jon Townley, who is director of visual effects, and by Steve Martino, design/animation director. Phyllis Nix serves as executive producer at Click 3X Los Angeles.
Tim Burton Discusses His Dread Of AI As An Exhibition of His Work Opens In London
The imagination of Tim Burton has produced ghosts and ghouls, Martians, monsters and misfits — all on display at an exhibition that is opening in London just in time for Halloween.
But you know what really scares him? Artificial intelligence.
Burton said Wednesday that seeing a website that had used AI to blend his drawings with Disney characters "really disturbed me."
"It wasn't an intellectual thought — it was just an internal, visceral feeling," Burton told reporters during a preview of "The World of Tim Burton" exhibition at London's Design Museum. "I looked at those things and I thought, 'Some of these are pretty good.' … (But) it gave me a weird sort of scary feeling inside."
Burton said he thinks AI is unstoppable, because "once you can do it, people will do it." But he scoffed when asked if he'd use the technology in this work.
"To take over the world?" he laughed.
The exhibition reveals Burton to be an analogue artist, who started off as a child in the 1960s experimenting with paints and colored pencils in his suburban Californian home.
"I wasn't, early on, a very verbal person," Burton said. "Drawing was a way of expressing myself."
Decades later, after films including "Edward Scissorhands," "Batman," "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "Beetlejuice," his ideas still begin with drawing. The exhibition includes 600 items from movie studio collections and Burton's personal archive, and traces those ideas as they advance from sketches through collaboration with set, production and costume designers on the way to the big screen.
London is the exhibition's final stop on a decade-long tour of 14 cities in 11 countries. It has been reconfigured and expanded with 90 new objects for its run in... Read More