August 17, 2012

‘Avengers’ sequel planned for May 2015
LOS ANGELES (AP) — “The Avengers” are returning for a superhero sequel three years from now.

Disney and its Marvel Studios unit announced Thursday that the follow-up to this year’s biggest hit will arrive in theaters on May 1, 2015.

The studio announced last week that Joss Whedon will be back to write and direct the as-yet-untitled sequel.

Released in May, “The Avengers” gathered such Marvel comic-book heroes as Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and Thor (Chris Hemsworth). The film has taken in nearly $1.5 billion worldwide.

There will be plenty of Marvel action building up to “The Avengers” follow-up. Downey’s “Iron Man 3” is due out next May, followed by Hemsworth’s “Thor” sequel in November 2013 and Evans’ “Captain America” sequel in April 2014.
 
Labor Community Applauds Calif. Assembly’s Passage Of Film & TV Tax Credit Program
LOS ANGELES–A broad coalition of unions and guilds representing labor and the entertainment industry lauded the passage of AB 2026 by the California State Assembly.

The bill, authored by Assembly member Felipe Fuentes, would extend the California Film & Television Tax Credit Program for an additional two years, ensuring that tens of thousands of skilled and talented Californians can continue to work in the state’s heritage industry — entertainment — and that the entertainment industry can continue to be an integral part of California’s economy.

The bill now must be approved by the State Senate before going to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk in order to be signed into law.

Without the extension, the State of California will have no chance of competing with more than 40 states and many foreign countries that offer generous incentive programs to retain and attract qualified motion pictures and television programs, resulting in the loss of tens of thousands of middle class jobs and all the ancillary economic benefits that a thriving entertainment industry brings to the economy.

The coalition of unions and guilds includes the Directors Guild of America; the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees; the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 399; Laborers’ International Union of North America, Local 724; Professional Musicians Local 47; the Recording Musicians Association; and SAG-AFTRA.

A Respite From Presidential Campaign Ads on 9/11
By David B. Caruso
NEW YORK (AP) — For the third straight election, the presidential candidates have agreed to suspend all campaign advertising on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, giving Americans a one-day breather from partisan backbiting.

The campaigns of President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney confirmed Wednesday that they would honor a request for an ad moratorium made by a New York-based civic group that promotes Sept. 11 as a national day for community service.

In a letter to both candidates last week, MyGoodDeed.org founders David Paine and Jay Winuk, whose brother died at the World Trade Center, urged the candidates to make the day about unity, not politics.

“We are making this request … so that the families of those lost, and the nation as a whole, can dedicate 9/11 to, and focus on remembering in prayer, and honoring through service, the 9/11 victims, rescue and recovery workers and the many individuals who rose to defend our nation in response to the attacks,” the letters said.

MyGoodDeed made a similar plea for a truce during the 2008 campaign. Both Obama and his Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, suspended all television advertising on the seventh anniversary of the attacks. The two candidates also visited ground zero together, walking side by side into the pit.

In 2004, President George W. Bush and his Democratic opponent, Sen. John Kerry, also pulled their advertisements off the air for the day.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Winuk and Paine said they hoped that suspending political ads on Sept. 11 would become a permanent feature of presidential campaigns.

“I think a lot of people inside and outside of the 9/11 community are really going to appreciate this,” Winuk said. “I think it sets a good example for people campaigning for other offices around the country, who will hopefully follow suit.”

Both men said they felt that the moratorium might help recapture some of the spirit of solidarity that many Americans felt in the days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in which hijacked airliners crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people.

“It carries a powerful message on a national stage,” Paine said. “We need to remember that we are Americans first, before we are Republicans or Democrats.”

Lucky Post partners with Tone Visuals
DALLAS–Through a newly formed creative alliance with Tone Visuals, Dallas-based Lucky Post has gained high-end visual effects finishing and color services. Brian Buongiorno, creative director/digital colorist at Tone Visuals, designed his shop’s new color and visual effects suite on the Lucky Post premises. The Tone Visuals bay is slated to welcome its first project next week.

Buongiorno met the team at Lucky Post via its sister company Directorz, lending his color talent to a variety of commercials helmed by the production company during the past three years. The conversation surrounding a formal collaboration evolved when Lucky Post opened earlier this year. The resulting alliance allows for a streamlined and efficient creative process for clients. Tone Visuals will work for clients in collaboration with Lucky Post exec producer Jessica Berry and her team.

Buongiorno has worked as a digital colorist, lead visual effects artist and effects supervisor for national commercials in collaboration with agencies BBDO, Campbell-Ewald, Campbell Mithun, Carmichael Lynch, DDB, Deutsch, GSD&M, Fallon, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, mcgarrybowen, Publicis, RPA, Saatchi & Saatchi/LA, TM Advertising, The Richards Group, and Weiden + Kennedy. In 2010 he opened Tone Visuals, Inc. to deliver VFX, color services and digital workflow to directors, editorial companies and advertising agencies. Under his own entity, Brian Buongiorno Visual Effects from 2001 to 2010, he worked on a contract basis with visual effects companies throughout the U.S. including A52, Digital Domain, Sea Level and Brewster Parsons.

Prior to 2001, Buongiorno was at 525 in the roles of lead visual effects artist, lead digital editor, digital editor/compositor, online and offline editor. There, he supervised and composited both live action and computer generated images for national commercials, music videos, episodic television, and feature film projects; and attended and supervised visual effects production shoots.

Netflix to expand service to 4 Nordic countries
Michael Liedtke, Technology Writer
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Netflix’s Internet video service will debut in four Nordic countries before the end of the year, the latest step in an international expansion that has been crimping the company’s financial results and stock price.

Wednesday’s announcement that Netflix is coming to Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland answers a question left hanging since April, when the company said it would enter another European market, without saying where.

The new market includes the setting for one of Netflix’s original online video series, “Lillyhammer,” which revolves around a New York mobster who moves to Norway.

Netflix Inc. began streaming movies and TV shows over the Internet in the United Kingdom and Ireland in January. Earlier, it had expanded to Canada and dozens of Latin American countries. The company got its start renting DVDs through the mail in the U.S. during the late 1990s before adding Internet video streaming in 2007.

The Internet video service costs $8 per month in the U.S. and is priced in the same range internationally. Netflix said it would reveal its prices in the four Nordic countries later this year.

As is the case in other markets outside the U.S., a DVD option won’t be available. Netflix has been trying to phase that out in the U.S. because of high postage costs and a belief that DVD technology will become obsolete.

Although Netflix has been able to eke out a modest profit in Canada, its service outside the U.S. so far has been a financial albatross. The company’s international operations lost $192 million during the first half of this year.

Netflix has been drawing upon the success of its long-established DVD and Internet video services in the U.S. to pay for the international expansion.

Those costs, coupled with rising fees to license Internet video in the U.S., have taken a heavy toll on the company. Netflix’s earned just $1.6 million during the first six months of the year, a 99 percent drop from net income of $128 million at the same time last year.

‘Expendables 2’ dedicated to memory of stuntmanBy Ryan Pearson, AP Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The veteran action stars of “The Expendables 2” say a stuntman’s on-set death served as a reminder of the danger behind building big-screen thrills.

Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger star in the film, which plays as a throwback to their 1980s heyday. The actors emerge unscathed from massive, bloody shootouts to crack wry one-liners, including some recycled from their own decades-old blockbusters.

The film was also distinctively old-school in its approach to action, using minimal computer effects in favor of stunt work and real explosions. Stuntman Kun Liu, 26, was killed during one such sequence while filming at a dam last year in Bulgaria.

Mixed martial arts fighter-turned-actor Randy Couture said the death during the second-unit shoot “changed the mood on the movie for a couple weeks, for sure.”

Stallone, who also co-wrote the script, told reporters this week in London that there had been deaths during two of his previous films and “it’s never easy.”

Co-star Dolph Lundgren said in an interview that his stunt double was seriously hurt in the same explosion, which he called a “major accident.”

“I could see like post-traumatic stress for a month after. Because he was very close to dying,” Lundgren said of his double, who was hit in the eye by a piece of iron. “It made us all realize that yeah, it is a dangerous business. You have to watch your steps.”

Couture and actor Terry Crews said there was no thought of closing down the film after the death.

“Stuntmen take these wonderful risks every day, like police officers, like firemen. It would be a shame to not finish,” Crews said. “And we kind of galvanized around that. That was a big moment for all of us, where we were like, ‘Let’s go.'”

At the end of the credits, the film is dedicated to Kun Liu’s memory.

But the stuntman’s parents have sued Millennium Films and the movie’s stunt coordinator, Chad Stahelski, claiming they were reckless in the preparations, training and execution of the stunt.

“That is a nice and thoughtful gesture to the decedent and his family, but certainly it does not absolve the responsible parties of his death,” said Bill Karns, an attorney representing Zong Yu Liu and Yan Mei Bai.

Stahelski and Elizabeth Wolfe, a spokeswoman for Millennium Films, have declined comment on the case.

NBC calls London Olympics “most-watched” TV event
NEW YORK (AP) — NBCUniversal is calling the London Olympics “the most-watched television event in U.S. history.”

Citing Nielsen Co. ratings figures, the company said Monday that more than 219 million viewers watched the Summer Games on NBC and numerous sister networks. This figure surpasses the 215 million who watched the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The company said NBC averaged a prime-time audience of 31 million, topping Summer Games viewerships in Beijing and in Athens in 2004.

Sunday’s closing ceremony was seen by 31 million viewers.

Covering its 13th Olympics, NBCUniversal presented 5,535 hours of coverage across its TV and online channels.

B-Reel Products hires former BBDO staffer as exec producerNEW YORK–B-Reel Products–a business oriented, R&D unit launched earlier this year by B-Reel for the development of marketable products in the intersection of technology, advertising, communication and entertainment–has brought Clemens Brandt on board as an executive producer in the New York office. Prior to joining B-Reel, Brandt served as executive producer at BBDO New York, overseeing all interactive production on the AT&T account with a team of five producers. His work on AT&T’s “You’ve Got a Case” earned multiple nominations and awards, including a Silver and Bronze at One Show Entertainment 2012, a Silver at Clios 2012, and Bronze at Direct Lions 2012.

Before moving to the States, Brandt worked at Wieden+Kennedy in London from 2008 to 2011, where he served as interactive producer and was later named sr. producer. During his tenure at Wieden+Kennedy, Brandt’s work on Nokia’s “Somebody Else’s Phone” earned merits and nominations at One Show 2009, Webby’s 2009, and Cyber Lions 2009. He also received recognition for Nokia’s “Music Almighty” at Eurobest 2008, Webby’s 2009, and won a One Show 2009 Gold.

In addition, Clemens holds a master’s degree in computer science. At the start of his career, he built a technical foundation as a web developer and technical consultant before switching to project and production management.

BBC: Olympic closing ceremony draws 26.3M viewersLONDON (AP) — The BBC said Monday that its live coverage of the Olympic closing ceremony was watched by 26.3 million people in the U.K., or more than 80 percent of the country’s audience share.

The broadcaster said in a statement that coverage on its flagship terrestrial channel, BBC1, peaked at 26 million on Sunday night, easily beating the previous U.K. audience record for an Olympic closing ceremony — the 11 million viewers who watched the ceremony in Barcelona in 1992. The BBC’s high-definition and 3D coverage Sunday added another 300,000 viewers.

The massive television audience was bolstered by 3.9 million people who watched the opening ceremony live on the BBC’s website or through its online playback service, iPlayer.

Overall the BBC reported that 55 million viewers had logged on to its sports website over the course of the games, which ran from July 27 to Aug. 12, with an average of 9.5 million browsers for each day of the games.

Sunday’s television figures were slightly down on the opening ceremony which kicked off the games on July 27. The Danny Boyle-directed opening extravaganza drew 26.9 million viewers at its height.

The BBC’s four main domestic channels are distinct from its international rolling news service, BBC World News, or services such as BBC America, which brings popular British shows such as “Top Gear” and “Dr. Who” to U.S. audiences.

Tribal DDB NY adds Marisa Shockley, Katie Degentesh
NEW YORK–Marisa Shockley and Katie Degentesh are joining Tribal DDB New York as director of global engagement strategy and creative director, respectively. Shockley will be working on the ExxonMobil and Pfizer Consumer Healthcare accounts. Degentesh is working on CIBA and Alcon.

Shockley comes to Tribal DDB from AT&T where she served as associate director of media innovation. Degentesh was formerly creative director at Moxie’s NY office where she worked on the Maybelline, Garnier Fructis, L’Oreal Paris and BBC America accounts.

Previously, Degentesh spent several years as a digitally focused brand consultant, working primarily for fashion clients like ALDO Shoes. She also spent several years client-side at Victoria’s Secret, launching creative for its Facebook site in 2009, and Chanel, launching that client’s first retail sites in 2001.  

Italian special effects master Rambaldi dies at 86
By Colleen Barry
MILAN (AP) — Special effects master and three-time Oscar winner Carlo Rambaldi died Friday (8/10) in southern Italy after a long illness, Italian news media reported. He was 86.

Rambaldi was known as the father of “E.T.” He won visual effects Oscars for Steven Spielberg’s 1982 extraterrestrial hit, as well as Ridley Scott’s film “Alien” in 1979, and John Guillermin’s “King Kong” in 1976.

Rambaldi worked on more than 30 films, but was best known for his work on E.T., for which he created three robots, two costumes worn by actors in the scenes when E.T. walked, and gloves for the hands.

Rambaldi, a wizard of a discipline known as mechatronics — which combines disciplines including mechanical, electronic and system design engineering — did not hide a disdain for computerized effects.

“Digital costs around eight times as much as mechatronics,” Rambaldi was quoted by the Rome daily La Repubblica as having once said. “E.T. cost a million dollars and we created it in three months. If we wanted to do the same thing with computers, it would take at least 200 people a minimum of five months.”

Rambaldi was born in 1925 in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna in 1951. While he dreamed of becoming an artist, he was drawn into the world of cinema when he was asked to create a dragon for a low-budget science fiction movie in 1956.

He moved to Rome and found work in television before his first big success, the 1975 Italian horror film “Deep Red.” He drew the attention of Dino De Laurentiis, who brought him to Hollywood to work on “King Kong.”

Italian director Pupi Avati described Rambaldi as “a child who loved to play and make his toys. A child who dreams of making a theme park of all his characters,” the news agency ANSA reported. The pair worked together on a 1975 film.

“In those years, Rambaldi was the only craftsman capable of creating, as he did, a fig tree 12 meters high that he carried to the center of Ferrara with a huge truck, a fig tree that was to change color with the seasons, and also shed its leaves.”

Rambaldi had been living for about a decade in the Calabrian city of Lamezia Terme, where he died.

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