Bicoastal content creation studio CVLT Production has expanded its executive suite with the additions of Charles Paek as creative director/VFX supervisor, and Frank Sun as executive producer/creative producer. Both will serve to oversee production and postproduction for client projects based out of New York and Los Angeles.
Paek has been behind award-winning creative projects for clients such as Lexus, Target, Acura, Infiniti, Marvel, Paramount and Tanqueray, while at CBS Broadcasting, HER3SY, Digital Domain and Artifact Studios, among others. Sun brings extensive experience shooting commercials, music videos, feature films and photography for Red Antler and his own production company XY Content, collaborating with clients including Google, Cartier, Norwegian Airlines and Nike.
A longtime filmmaker and VFX supervisor, Paek has distinguished himself in the industry from his early days as a lead designer at CBS Broadcasting to his past work at Digital Domain. Over the years, he cultivated his signature creative style of high-end, photoreal design in all of his projects. In the past decade he has worked as a director, art director and VFX supervisor, earning a VES nomination and a Clio win for his creative projects.
Sun’s career began as a cameraman on the sunny islands of Survivor. He later moved to New York City to pursue a life in filmmaking. His passion for crafting vivid imagery led him to cinematography, where he helmed brand spots, films and music videos. He founded XY Content in 2013 alongside his creative partner, Habib Yazdi, and led a successful collective of roster clients and talent for five years, working with such clients and agencies as Publicis, WPP, McKinney, Red Antler and Google.
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival — has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive — a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
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