Phasmatrope Studios, a Haverford, Penns.-headquartered production house headed by director Jeff Odiorne and executive producer Jonathan Isen, has added director Guy Quinlan and extended its reach with the launch of a New York office under the aegis of Christine DoRego. Formerly a producer at Dallas-based ad agency The Richards Group, DoRego joins Phasmatrope as head of sales.
The New York-based Quinlan has just wrapped his first Phasmatrope job, an online spot/mock movie trailer for Vitamin Water via agency Stick and Move, Philadelphia, featuring star NFL quarterback Donovan McNabb of the Philadelphia Eagles.
First establishing himself as a producer in the business, Quinlan learned the ropes at Wells Rich Greene, New York, transferring to Milan to produce commercials worldwide. There he introduced numerous U.S. directors to the Italian market.
Quinlan then jumped over to the production house side of the business, becoming New York-based executive producer for now defunct The End. Four years later he went freelance in New York, producing for U.S. and European agencies. During his freelance tenure, he started to garner directorial assignments. He amassed directing credits on 10 viral web films and 10 shorts shot on location in Europe.
The opportunity at Phasmatrope then emerged. “Jon Isen was looking for a director who was walking the new media line and Oscar Thomas [producer at Driver Media, New York] said ‘I have the guy,'” said Quinlan. “The timing was perfect.”
Quinlan added that he feels “a like-minded connection” with Isen and Odiorne as they look to bring advertising and entertainment together in “relevant new forms of worldwide media.”
N.Y. digs Phasmatrope’s New York office is housed in the Ed Sullivan Theater complex. The aforementioned DoRego had been a producer at The Richards Group for the past four years. She moved up the ladder there, having joined the Dallas agency in ’01 as a production coordinator.
Like DoRego, Odiorne has deep ad shop roots, having made a successful transition from agency creative to commercials director. On the agency side, he was creative director/cofounder of Odiorne Wilde Narraway and Partners, San Francisco. He first was part of a directorial team, the Odiorne Brothers, with Peter Odiorne. The Odiorne Brothers launched Phasmatrope in ’05, going on to gain inclusion in SHOOT’s New Directors Showcase the following year. Through work directed by the Odiorne Brothers, Phasmatrope earned five gold and three silver Best of TV awards at the ’07 Philadelphia Ad Club ADDY Awards.
By that time, The Odiorne Brothers had split up–as a directorial team and then from a business standpoint when Peter Odiorne exited Phasmatrope in late ’06 to form Sleeping Tree Films in New York and Bryn Mawr, Penn.
The Phasmatrope directorial roster now consists of Jeff Odiorne, Quinlan, Steve Andrich, Scott Whitham and Billy Paul. The latter three helmers joined the company earlier this year.
AI-Assisted Works Can Get Copyright With Enough Human Creativity, According To U.S. Copyright Office
Artists can copyright works they made with the help of artificial intelligence, according to a new report by the U.S. Copyright Office that could further clear the way for the use of AI tools in Hollywood, the music industry and other creative fields.
The nation's copyright office, which sits in the Library of Congress and is not part of the executive branch, receives about half a million copyright applications per year covering millions of individual works. It has increasingly been asked to register works that are AI-generated.
And while many of those decisions are made on a case-by-case basis, the report issued Wednesday clarifies the office's approach as one based on what the top U.S. copyright official describes as the "centrality of human creativity" in authoring a work that warrants copyright protections.
"Where that creativity is expressed through the use of AI systems, it continues to enjoy protection," said a statement from Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter, who directs the office.
An AI-assisted work could be copyrightable if an artist's handiwork is perceptible. A human adapting an AI-generated output with "creative arrangements or modifications" could also make it fall under copyright protections.
The report follows a review that began in 2023 and fielded opinions from thousands of people that ranged from AI developers, to actors and country singers.
It shows the copyright office will continue to reject copyright claims for fully machine-generated content. A person simply prompting a chatbot or AI image generator to produce a work doesn't give that person the ability to copyright that work, according to the report. "Extending protection to material whose expressive elements are determined by a machine ...... Read More