Industry vet Jeff Blodgett has been hired as executive producer of Brickyard VFX‘s Santa Monica shop. Brickyard also maintains a home base in Boston. He comes over after five years at Radium/ReelFX as executive producer. He worked out of the Santa Monica office of Radium/ReelFX overseeing visual effects, animation and motion graphics projects primarily for commercials for brands such as Target, Nike, Pepsi, Lexus, and Energizer.
Previously Blodgett spent 10 years at Sight Effects, where he learned the business through his roles as visual effects producer, producer, and senior producer. Jeff has worked on more than 300 commercials over the course of his career.
Blodgett hails from Western Massachusetts and joining a team with a strong Boston foothold was a natural fit. He will be working out of the Santa Monica Brickyard office, and joins just as the company expanded with an additional 3,200 square feet. The space provides a new home for the company’s growing CG team, screening room, conference room, and Autodesk Flame suites.
Steve Michaels, managing partner at Brickyard VFX, cited Blodgett’s experience and “deep ties in the advertising industry…With our recent expansion, we’ve been able to build out our design and CG team and Jeff is the perfect choice to help Brickyard extend our service slate beyond visual effects into more design-centric CG and motion graphics work.”
Snubs and Surprises In Oscar NominationsÂ
In one of the more wide-open Oscar fields in recent history, there were plenty of nominations surprises Thursday. Not too long ago, it seemed that people like Angelina Jolie and Nicole Kidman were destined for best actress nominations, while general audience disinterest in the young Donald Trump movie "The Apprentice" might have indicated its awards chances were dead on arrival. But the members of the film academy had something different in mind. Here are some of the biggest snubs and surprises from the 97th Oscar nominations. SURPRISE: Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan, "The Apprentice" The young Trump movie "The Apprentice" has been one of the bigger awards season question marks, especially after it failed to resonate with moviegoers in theaters. And yet both Jeremy Strong, for his portrayal for Trump lawyer Roy Cohn, and Sebastian Stan (who was also in the conversation for "A Different Man" ), for playing the future two-time president, made it in. Only Strong got nominated by the Screen Actors Guild. SNUB: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, "Hard Truths" This will forever be one of the more confounding awards season oversights. Marianne Jean-Baptiste delivered one of the all-time great performances in Mike Leigh's "Hard Truths," as the perpetually aggrieved and sharp-tongued London woman Pansy. The general thinking is that it was either going to be Jean-Baptiste or Fernanda Torres, and Torres got in for the equally beloved "I'm Still Here." SNUB: Pamela Anderson, "The Last Showgirl" This is perhaps up for debate, but there was certainly a lot of goodwill behind Anderson's movie-star turn in Gia Coppola's "The Last Showgirl," especially considering her SAG nomination. But like with Jennifer Lopez and... Read More