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.”
Juliette Welfling Takes On A Musical, A Crime Thriller, Comedy and Drama In “Emelia Pérez”
Editor Juliette Welfling has a track record of close-knit, heartfelt collaboration with writer-director Jacques Audiard, a four-time BAFTA Award nominee for Best Film not in the English Language--starting with The Beat That My Heart Skipped in 2006, then A Prophet in 2010, Rust and Bone in 2013, and Dheepan in 2017. He won for The Beat That My Heart Skipped and A Prophet.
Welfling cut three of those features: A Prophet, Rust and Bone, and Dheepan. And that shared filmography has since grown to most recently include Emelia Pérez, the Oscar buzz-worthy film from Netflix. Welfling herself is not stranger to Academy Award banter. In fact, she earned a Best Achievement in Film Editing Oscar nomination in 2008 for director Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
Emelia Pérez is a hybrid musical/drama/thriller which introduces us to a talented but undervalued lawyer named Rita (portrayed by Zoe Saldana) who receives a lucrative offer out of the blue from a feared drug cartel boss who’s looking to retire from his sordid business and disappear forever by becoming the woman he’s always dreamt of being (Karla Sofía Gascón in a dual role as Manitas Del Monte/Emilia Pérez). Rita helps pull this off, orchestrating the faked death of Del Monte who leaves behind a widow (Jessi, played by Selena Gomez) and kids. While living comfortably and contently in her/their new identity, Pérez misses the children. Pérez once again enlists Rita--this time to return to family life, reuniting with the kids by pretending to be their aunt, the sister of Del Monte. Now as an aunt, Pérez winds up adopting a more altruistic bent professionally,... Read More