Cr. Dir./Director To Head West Coast Office.
The Firm Design Group, a bicoastal creative concept studio specializing in broadcast design and image campaigns, has enlisted creative director/director Peter Burega to head up the company’s West Coast in Venice. Burega is also available to direct commercial projects through The Firm Design Group’s parent company, New York-based spot house Fourth of July Productions. The Firm Design Group’s East Coast operation is on the Fourth of July premises.
Burega was most recently creative director at 138 Degrees, a design/graphics company that is being folded into The Firm Design Group. Burega’s recent credits include: an identity campaign for USA Network, including six TV spots launching its new on-air branding. Burega also helmed five commercials and a 10-ID campaign for the House of Blues International. He creative directed a spot for Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, as well as the music video "Sheep Go to Heaven" for rock band Cake, which experienced heavy rotation on MTV.
Having started his industry career in live-action production, a chance meeting with designer/director Flavio Kampah led Burega to assisting Kampah in the production of several Toyota campaigns. Burega went on to serve as executive producer of Aerodrome Pictures, Los Angeles, and 3 Ring Circus, Hollywood, and as managing and creative director of Telezign/Los Angeles (TZLA).
In his role as creative director for The Firm Design Group, Burega will also provide marketing and strategy services to clients, including positioning statements and brand identity consultation. Burega draws on his design skills to sometimes merge live-action footage with animation, graphics and 3-D elements.
The Firm Design Group was launched in June ’99, by Fourth of July Productions. In addition to the arrival of creative director/director Peter Burega, the company features the talents of senior creative director/director Michael Uman and the directing team of Violet Suk and Martin Koch (Suk & Koch). The Firm Design Group has completed projects for Comedy Central, the Sci-Fi Channel, USA Network, and most recently, four new show opens for BET. David Edelstein is executive producer for both The Firm Design Group and Fourth of July Productions.
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 โ 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 โ 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.' โฆ (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