Commercial editing house Optimus, Chicago, has brought motion graphics specialist Rick Thompson on board as design director in its graphics department. He formerly served as a senior designer at Digital Kitchen, Chicago.
Thompson’s credits include entertainment projects for such clients as HBO, CBS and Showtime. He earlier spent 10 years as an Inferno artist at Chicago post house Swell, where he completed work for the likes of Budweiser, McDonald’s and adidas.
The hiring of Thompson continues the growth curve at Optimus. His joining comes on the heels of the company adding visual effects director Matt Daly.
On a separate front, Optimus won four Hugo Awards last month on the strength of its OptiTV initiative whereby the shop’s employees were encouraged to create their own original commercials which then ran on Comcast cable outlets in the Chicago market. The creative/morale booster for Optimus staffers yielded quite a body of work as chronicled in SHOOT last June. Among the spots was “Trappings of Leisure,” created and directed by Optimus’ After Effects editor Mark Butchko. The short won the Hugo Audience Award and a gold plaque for special achievement in computer graphics. More than 12,000 people voted for the Audience Choice honor, choosing “Trappings of Leisure” from 27 finalists, most of which were client-driven ad entries from Chicago agencies.
Optimus also copped a gold Hugo plaque for “William Elliott Whitemore” and a silver plaque for Remembering Monticello, also OptiTV creations. All OptiTV spots are available at www.optitv.com.
House Calls Via TV and Streamers: A Rundown of The Season’s Doctor Dramas
No matter your ailment, there are plenty of TV doctors waiting to treat you right now on a selection of channels and streamers.
Whether it's Noah Wyle putting on his stethoscope for the first time since "ER," Morris Chestnut graduating to head doctor, Molly Parker making her debut in scrubs or Joshua Jackson trading death for life on a luxury cruise, new American hospital dramas have something for everyone.
There's also an outsider trying to make a difference in "Berlin ER," as Haley Louise Jones plays the new boss of a struggling German hospital's emergency department. The show's doors slide open to patients Wednesday on Apple TV+.
These shows all contain the DNA of classic hospital dramas โ and this guide will help you get the TV treatment you need.
"Berlin ER"
Dr. Suzanna "Zanna" Parker has been sent to run the Krank, which is only just being held together by hardened โ and authority-resistant โ medical staff and supplies from a sex shop. The result is an unflinching drama set in an underfunded, underappreciated and understaffed emergency department, where the staff is as traumatized as the patients, but hide it much better.
From former real-life ER doc Samuel Jefferson and also starring Slavko Popadiฤ, ลafak ลengรผl, Aram Tafreshian and Samirah Breuer, the German-language show is not for the faint of heart.
Jones says she eventually got used to the blood and gore on the set.
"It's gruesome in the beginning, highly unnerving. And then at some point, it's just the most normal thing in the world," she explains. "That's flesh. That's the rest of someone's leg, you know, let's just move on and have coffee or whatever."
As it's set in the German clubbing capital, the whole city... Read More