Creative services company BigStar has added creative director John Leamy to its team. Leamy is an award-winning, multidisciplinary creative who is best known for his design, live show graphics, film, and print work. He brings more than two decades of experience in shaping advertising, marketing, and branding campaigns for such clients as ABC, Red Bull, MGM Grand, and LG. Leamy is currently working on the title design and branding for the upcoming PBS series, Chasing the Moon.
Entering its 15th year of business, BigStar with its hiring of Leamy rounds out a benchmark 2018 in which the company has expanded its footprint as an entertainment marketing and branding partner of major TV networks and OTT content providers, tallying blockbuster show launches and campaigns for FX, HBO, ABC, Amazon, AMC, Turner, and Syfy. Meanwhile, BigStar continues to increase its slate of feature film and documentary series work. The team recently made waves with the 2018 top-grossing indie, Free Solo, from National Geographic, creating the documentary’s main titles, VFX sequences, and graphics package.
Leamy has a history with BigStar founder/ECD Josh Norton. Their relationship began more than 20 years ago when the two were freelancers, working side-by-side at various creative studios. Since then, the two have stayed in touch and were waiting for the right opportunity to work together again. Most recently, Leamy was ECD at Leroy & Clarkson, serving at the helm of projects for clients such as National Geographic, Nasdaq, Nickelodeon, and ABC News. Prior to that, he was creative director at Spontaneous, a position he held for eight years while leading projects for a wide variety of clients, such as AT&T, Wendy’s, Maybelline, and Lockheed Martin. In addition, he was a long-time creative partner of U2 creating live concert visuals, music video, film, and print content for the seminal rock band. Leamy started his career as a freelance artist at Imaginary Forces, RadicalMedia, Freestyle Collective, and MTV, among others.
After 20 Years of Acting, Megan Park Finds Her Groove In The Director’s Chair On “My Old Ass”
Megan Park feels a little bad that her movie is making so many people cry. It's not just a single tear either — more like full body sobs.
She didn't set out to make a tearjerker with "My Old Ass," now streaming on Prime Video. She just wanted to tell a story about a young woman in conversation with her older self. The film is quite funny (the dialogue between 18-year-old and almost 40-year-old Elliott happens because of a mushroom trip that includes a Justin Bieber cover), but it packs an emotional punch, too.
Writing, Park said, is often her way of working through things. When she put pen to paper on "My Old Ass," she was a new mom and staying in her childhood bedroom during the pandemic. One night, she and her whole nuclear family slept under the same roof. She didn't know it then, but it would be the last time, and she started wondering what it would be like to have known that.
In the film, older Elliott ( Aubrey Plaza ) advises younger Elliott ( Maisy Stella ) to not be so eager to leave her provincial town, her younger brothers and her parents and to slow down and appreciate things as they are. She also tells her to stay away from a guy named Chad who she meets the next day and discovers that, unfortunately, he's quite cute.
At 38, Park is just getting started as a filmmaker. Her first, "The Fallout," in which Jenna Ortega plays a teen in the aftermath of a school shooting, had one of those pandemic releases that didn't even feel real. But it did get the attention of Margot Robbie 's production company LuckyChap Entertainment, who reached out to Park to see what other ideas she had brewing.
"They were very instrumental in encouraging me to go with it," Park said. "They're just really even-keeled, good people, which makes... Read More