Framestore Pictures has signed cinematographer and commercial director Fernando Cardenas to its roster.
Cardenas began his career working for the production company The Directors Bureau. It led to collaborating with a variety of innovative artists and filmmakers including Roman Coppola, Mike Mills, Sofia Coppola and others.
In addition to his work behind the camera as a DP, Cardenas was instrumental behind the scenes, creating treatments and visual research for various commercial and feature film directors at companies like HSI, Biscuit Filmworks, Smuggler and Supply & Demand.
Cardenas’ cinematic vision caught the attention of TBWAMedia Arts Lab, who tapped him for a range of productions, from web content to TV spots. As a director, he has helped to shape global brands such as Apple, HP, Google, ESPN, Adidas, Facebook, and Beats by Dre.
Adding Cardenas is the latest move in Framestore’s ongoing evolution to expand its services beyond an award winning VFX house, with the talent and tools to deliver the total project, from inception to completion.
In creating this business model, Framestore has bolstered the foundation of its offices over the past year. The global company recently tapped executive producers Jennifer Siegel and John Duffin, who came on board in 2014, to spearhead Framestore Pictures’ operations out of the New York, Los Angeles and London offices. With their combined experience, Siegel and Duffin have and continue to cultivate a roster of directors with diverse backgrounds, who provide solutions throughout every stage of the process to execute a single creative vision. Cardenas too fits that profile.
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival — has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive — a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
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