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    Optimus adds five, including editors Valencia, Glover, VFX supervisor Wood

    By SHOOTUpdated:No Comments2291 Views
    CHICAGO --

    Production and post house Optimus is bringing aboard editor/partner Angelo Valencia, editor Matt Glover, VFX supervisor Ryan Wood, sr. producer Joanna Woods and assistant editor Emily Hayes. This quintet most recently worked together at the Chicago office of Beast/Company 3/Method Studios, and is slated to officially start at Optimus on April 16.

    Valencia has spent the last 20 years helping create award-winning content for screens of all sizes. He has edited commercials, short films, documentaries, music videos, and feature films. His client partners include BMW, Capital One, Southwest Airlines and Walgreens.  

    Glover, with 10 years experience, has cut two Emmy Award-winning films, including “Chicago: The Most American City,” a short film for NATO, and “Emergence,” a film about dance. He’s cut work for Apple, Maui Jim, Nintendo, SC Johnson and Walmart, among others. A Detroit Native, Glover has called Chicago home for the past 15 years. 

    Wood creates high-end visual effects, including compositing, finishing, CGI/3D animation and on-set VFX supervision. Wood has helped deliver original, award-winning feature film and commercial content for a wide variety of clients including the Super Bowl Pacman commercial for Bud Light, the VFX for the commercial release of Nintendo’s last Star Fox game, and the finish and compositing for the award-winning “Dad and Andy” for Whirlpool. 

    Sr. producer Woods brings eight years experience overseeing all aspects of the post process. She has post-produced campaigns for brands including Allstate, Coors Light, Hallmark, Kellogg’s and Walmart, as well as Pearl Jam’s documentary film, “Let’s Play Two.”

    Hayes brings six years experience as an editorial assistant, both at premiere post houses and as a freelancer. Winner of Camp Kuleshov Tent City 2014, she has assisted for brands such as Always, Capital One, McDonald’s, Miller Lite and Reebok. Hayes is passionate about documentary content and has collaborated on biographical shorts for athletes including Josh Gordon, Mike Marjama, Justin Pugh and JJ Redick. She has also cut music videos and social content for artists including Neko Case.

    Optimus president Tom Duff said, “Angelo is one of the world’s elite editors, but what really sets him apart is his sincerity as a human being, and his loyalty and commitment to his people. We look forward to having him and his core team of Matt, Joanna, Emily, and Ryan join our Optimus family.” 

    Tags:Angelo ValenciaMatt GloverOptimusRyan WoodTom Duff



    Review: Rachel Morrison Makes Feature Directorial Debut With “The Fire Inside”

    Monday, December 23, 2024

    "The Fire Inside," about boxer Claressa "T-Rex" Shields, is not your standard inspirational sports drama, even if it feels like it for the first half of the movie.

    There's the hopeless dream, the difficult home life, the blighted community, the devoted coach, the training montages, the setbacks and, against all odds, the win. We've seen this kind of story before, you might think, and you'd be right. But then the movie pulls the rug out from under you: The victory is not the end. "The Fire Inside," directed by Rachel Morrison and written by Barry Jenkins, is as much about what happens after the win. It's not always pretty or inspirational, but it is truthful, and important.

    Sports dramas can be just as cliche as fairy tales, with the gold medal and beautiful wedding presented as a happy ending. We buy into it time and time again for obvious reasons, but the idea of a happy ending at all, or even an ending, is almost exclusively for the audience. We walk away content that someone has found true love or achieved that impossible goal after all that work. For the subject, however, it's a different proposition; Life, and all its mundanities, disappointments and hardships, continues after all. And in the world of sports, that high moment often comes so young that it might be easy to look at the rest of the journey as a disappointing comedown.

    Claressa Shields, played by Ryan Destiny in the film, was only 17 when she went to the 2012 London Olympics. Everything was stacked against her, including the statistics: No American woman had ever won an Olympic gold medal in the sport before. Her opponents had years on her. She was still navigating high school in Flint, Michigan, and things on the home front were volatile and lacking. Food was sometimes scarce... Read More

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