International production company Stink Films has added the multi-faceted creative team Assembly to its roster of talent in the U.S. Assembly is an award-winning digital production studio with a core team of directors, filmmakers, concept artists, graphic designers, developers, engineers, VFX specialists, 3D artists, and animators. They combine this range of technical prowess in order to create connections across the broadest range of visual storytelling. This is their first representation.
Based in New Zealand, Assembly is comprised of Damon Duncan, Jonny Kofoed, Matt von Trott, and Rhys Dippie. They use and create technology to build connection and understanding, to provoke, and to craft stories that resonate, inspire, educate, and inform.
Assembly’s eye for design, storytelling, and visual effects has produced award-winning work that explores the intersection between art, music, advertising, and culture. Recent work includes the main titles for the award-winning feature film Jojo Rabbit, all of the VFX in the BBC’s six-part series The Luminaries, the 3D animations for Sony’s Be Moved website experience, and animations for both Burger King and Verizon. They also created an intimate elegy to music legend Tom Petty for his song "Wildflowers," using never before seen footage from album sessions provided by Petty’s family. Other brands and clients they have worked with include Samsung, Audi, VW, Lexus, Singapore Airlines, Pepsi, Skittles, Marvel, Microsoft, Google, Nike, Marc Jacobs, IBM, GE, and Budweiser. Assembly has also collaborated with iconic artists such as Stevie Wonder, Ariana Grande, Pharrell Williams, Zendaya, Coldplay, and Rihanna; and turned out work for agencies like Wieden+Kennedy in Portland, Ore., FCB/New Zealand, Deutsch NY, Clemenger BBDO, Colenso BBDO, and Y&R/New Zealand.
Assembly has been recognized consistently each year, garnering more than 100 international awards across animation, design, and direction, including the Webbys, the ADC, Yellow Pencils at D&AD, and multiple Gold Lions at Cannes.
Assembly head of production Helen Naulls said of Stink, “They understand our brand and our desire to infuse emotion and human connection into all that we do. They get all that we are capable of delivering on collaborations with agencies and brands. We are happy to have their respected name and level of professionalism advocating for us with their well established relationships in the industry.”
Stink Films EP Fran McGivern said of Assembly, “They are an astonishingly talented collective of filmmakers, animators, designers, engineers, and visual effects specialists, full of creativity and innovative thought. With two jobs booked right out of the gate, we’re already creating meaningful work with them and can’t wait to explore more groundbreaking creative opportunities in the U.S. market.”
Review: Director Ali Abbasi’s “The Apprentice”
Decades before he hosted "The Apprentice," Donald Trump was … an apprentice.
His mentor: Roy Cohn, the ruthless attorney who was a prominent New York power broker in the '70s and '80s after famously serving as a top aide to Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
The Trump-Cohn connection is well known. But in "The Apprentice," his provocative if not quite shocking, entertaining if not quite illuminating, impeccably acted and inherently controversial film, Ali Abbasi takes it farther.
It's this relationship, posits the Danish Iranian director, that essentially made a young real estate heir — inexperienced but wildly ambitious — into the man who would become the 45th U.S. president, smashing the norms of American politics along the way.
Speaking of unlikely paths: The mere route of "The Apprentice" to the big screen is fodder for its own movie.
Written by Gabriel Sherman and starring an ingeniously cast trio of Sebastian Stan as Trump, Jeremy Strong as Cohn and Maria Bakalova as Ivana Trump, the film failed to get picked up at Cannes in May. That was surely due at least in part to a cease and desist letter from Trump lawyers.
Trump's campaign spokesman called the movie "pure fiction" (the filmmakers call their script "fact-based"). One of the film's investors — Trump supporter Dan Snyder, former owner of the Washington Commanders — saw it and wanted out. It was only weeks ago that Briarcliff Entertainment announced it would open "The Apprentice" this Friday — less than four weeks before the U.S. election.
So, what kind of movie do we have here?
Contrary to some descriptions, Abbasi says his film isn't a biopic at all, but a look at a relationship — and at a system that's about winning at any cost.
He's also... Read More