Established this past summer as a postproduction, sound design/ mixing and visual effects holding company, New York-headquartered Burning Suits has changed its name in light of the Sept. 11 tragedy. The new moniker is Creative Content Studios (CCS), with holdings that consist of New York houses Super Dupe, East Side Video, Lower East Side Studios, Arc Light, Crush and Post Perfect. Each shop retains its own name and identity under the CCS brand. CCS CEO Steve Hendricks explained that Burning Suits NYC was originally chosen as a name "to connote the spark of creative thinking and outstanding talent. We feel the same message can be conveyed as Creative Content Studios."……MTV Commercials, New York, has been shut down as part of the network’s consolidation….Director/cinematographer Carolyn Chen has joined bicoastal/international Believe Media for exclusive spot representation. Her former directorial roost was Picture Park, Boston and Santa Monica. She continues to be repped as a DP by ICM….Key artists and support personnel from Santa Monica-based 525 Studios are headed for digital studio R!OT, Santa Monica. In tandem with this infusion of talent into R!OT, plans call for 525 to curtail operations by year’s end. Both R!OT and 525 are members of the Liberty Livewire Pictures Group…..Director Scott Young and producer Todd Young, who had both been freelancing, have teamed to launch Addiction Films. Currently housed in interim space in Venice, Calif., the new venture is in the process of lining up sales representation….Director Tony Kaye is being repped as a composer through Amber Music, New York and London….NFL Films, Mount Laurel, N.J., has signed director Pier Nicola D’Amico….Executive producer Dick Gillespie has departed Spoke Films, Los Angeles and Chicago….Writer/director Linda Hassani has joined Steel Productions, New York…J. Walter Thompson San Francisco has merged with Tonic 360, a San Francisco shop that provides Internet-based services for its clientele. The new entity is called JWT & Tonic. Tonic 360 had been operating as a separate JWT unit ever since it was bought by the multinational agency in Oct. 2000. That acquistion took place after JWT’s New York office and Tonic 360 teamed to make a successful pitch for the Sun Microsystems account….Chuck Meehan and Tricia Ting have joined Los Angeles-headquartered ad agency davidandgoliath as associate creative director and art director, respectively. Meehan, who will play a principal role in spearheading work on the Universal Orlando acount, comes over from Publicis & Hal Riney, San Francisco, where he served as a senior writer. Ting was most recently an art director at Leagas Delaney, San Francisco….
Lucy Walker Made A Searing Documentary About Wildfires In 2021; Now, People May Be More Inclined To Listen
When Lucy Walker debuted her harrowing documentary about California wildfires, "Bring Your Own Brigade," at Sundance in 2021, it was during peak COVID. Not the best time for a film on a wholly different scourge.
"It was really hard," the Oscar-nominated filmmaker says now. "I didn't blame people for not wanting to watch a film about the fires in the middle of the pandemic, because it was just too much horror."
And so the film, though acclaimed — it was named one of the 10 best films of the year by the New York Times – didn't reach an audience as large as Walker had hoped, with its urgent display of the human cost of wildfires and its tough, crucial questions for the future.
That could change. Walker thinks people may now be more receptive to her message, given the devastating wildfires that have wrought havoc on Los Angeles itself the past week. Firefighters were preparing on Tuesday to attack new blazes amid warnings that winds combined with severely dry conditions created a " particularly dangerous situation."
"This is probably the moment where it becomes undeniable," she said in an interview.
She added: "It does feel like people are now asking the question that I was asking a few years ago, like, 'Is it safe to live in Los Angeles? And why is this happening, and what can we do about it? And the good news is that there are some things we can do about it. What's tricky is that they're really hard to accomplish."
Documenting the human cost, confronting complacency
In "Bring Your Own Brigade" (available on Paramount+), Walker portrays in sometimes terrifying detail the devastation caused by two wildfires on the same day in 2018, products of the same wind event — the Camp Fire that engulfed the... Read More