Alex Frisch–who spent the past year focused on building a global network of digital artists after having left his managing director’s post at Method Studios in 2009–has joined creative studio/digital agency Imaginary Forces (IF) as a creative director and VFX supervisor.
Frisch brings a much needed special brand of expertise to IF, said Peter Frankfurt, managing director of the studio. “IF has seen an explosion of VFX in our projects and its importance in our storytelling. We are re-thinking the way to use VFX, and having Alex here gives us an opportunity to increase our capability for doing that,” related Frankfurt.
Fellow IF managing director Chip Houghton added, “It’s important to note that the idea is not to become a VFX studio but to harness what’s going on online and across every platform right now.”
Frisch is known for his VFX work on high-end commercials, feature films and music videos. In 1998, he co-founded Method Studios where he specialized in creating VFX for commercials. He became the shop’s managing director in 2002 and departed the company in ’09 to channel his efforts into the alluded to global network of talent. The idea behind the network was to set up a pipeline to create high-end productions with lower overhead costs and to utilize hand picked top artists on a per project basis. Frisch produced three projects with that network and then began collaborating in a low-profile fashion with IF on commercials.
Frisch said he was drawn to the IF team’s storytelling prowess and penchant for developing highly creative projects. Furthermore, IF will give greater impetus to the global pipeline he has been shaping. Frisch and IF have decided to partner, said Frisch, “on creating an international network of artists that will support us in creating our own content and projects; I have been cultivating this group over the course of this year and we are going to roll it out in 2011.”
TikTok’s Fate Arrives At Supreme Court; Arguments Center On Free Speech and National Security
In one of the most important cases of the social media age, free speech and national security collide at the Supreme Court on Friday in arguments over the fate of TikTok, a wildly popular digital platform that roughly half the people in the United States use for entertainment and information.
TikTok says it plans to shut down the social media site in the U.S. by Jan. 19 unless the Supreme Court strikes down or otherwise delays the effective date of a law aimed at forcing TikTok's sale by its Chinese parent company.
Working on a tight deadline, the justices also have before them a plea from President-elect Donald Trump, who has dropped his earlier support for a ban, to give him and his new administration time to reach a "political resolution" and avoid deciding the case. It's unclear if the court will take the Republican president-elect's views — a highly unusual attempt to influence a case — into account.
TikTok and China-based ByteDance, as well as content creators and users, argue the law is a dramatic violation of the Constitution's free speech guarantee.
"Rarely if ever has the court confronted a free-speech case that matters to so many people," lawyers for the users and content creators wrote. Content creators are anxiously awaiting a decision that could upend their livelihoods and are eyeing other platforms.
The case represents another example of the court being asked to rule about a medium with which the justices have acknowledged they have little familiarity or expertise, though they often weigh in on meaty issues involving restrictions on speech.
The Biden administration, defending the law that President Joe Biden signed in April after it was approved by wide bipartisan majorities in Congress, contends that... Read More