Mark Hyatt and George Cawood are exec producers at the newly launched Culver City, Calif.-based production house Make+Model, which opens with a directorial roster that includes the Goetz Brothers who come over from Detour, Russell Bates, formerly of Crossroads, Marcos Zavitsanos from Alta Vista, and Jon Barber whose work recently won several Bessie Awards with OPC in Canada….Nola Pictures, New York, has signed director Nick Lewin whose credits include American Express, AT&T, BMW, British Telecom, Cadillac, Chevron, Diet Coke, Ford, Guinness, Heineken, Honda, Nissan, Visa, Volkswagen and Volvo. Lewin's prior roosts include Crossroads and London-based shop Lewin & Watson which he co-ran. The move to Nola reunites him with executive producer Charlie Curran whom he worked with at Crossroads and back when Curran was an agency producer….Optimus Santa Monica has brought Ashley Bartell aboard as a producer. Bartell, who will work closely with executive producer Therese Hunsberger, had served most recently as director of operations at RavensWork, a commercial audio mixing and recording house in Venice, Calif. She has worked with such clients as Kia Motors America (KMA) for David&Goliath; Nestlé Nesquik® and Northrop Grumman for McCann Erickson; Toyota for Saatchi & Saatchi; and Toys”R”Us for You&Me. Optimus is a leading postproduction and production house headquartered in Chicago with an editorial boutique in Santa Monica….Exec producer Roland Gauthier, VFX supervisor Michael Kuehn and animation director Alex Tysowsky have formally founded Hinge Digital, a Portland, Ore.-based animation and VFX studio….Noah Clark has joined Victors & Spoils office in Boulder, Colo., as creative director. He will lead creative efforts on all the agency's account. He previously worked at Crispin Porter+Bogusky, and prior to that at agency Ground Zero….Connor Swegle, formerly executive producer at Click 3X Entertainment, N.Y., has joined Hollywood-based multidisciplinary brand strategy and design agency Troika as exec producer. Swegle will work closely with creative directors Whit Friese and Gil Haslam on Troika's key entertainment brands, such as ESPN, Discovery Networks and EA Sports. While Swegle will focus largely on client services and project management, he will also play a key role in facilitating the agency's knowledge and expertise as a brand consultancy for strategic services and creative execution…
Martin Scorsese On “The Saints,” Faith In Filmmaking and His Next Movie
When Martin Scorsese was a child growing up in New York's Little Italy, he would gaze up at the figures he saw around St. Patrick's Old Cathedral. "Who are these people? What is a saint?" Scorsese recalls. "The minute I walk out the door of the cathedral and I don't see any saints. I saw people trying to behave well within a world that was very primal and oppressed by organized crime. As a child, you wonder about the saints: Are they human?" For decades, Scorsese has pondered a project dedicated to the saints. Now, he's finally realized it in "Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints," an eight-part docudrama series debuting Sunday on Fox Nation, the streaming service from Fox News Media. The one-hour episodes, written by Kent Jones and directed by Elizabeth Chomko, each chronicle a saint: Joan of Arc, Francis of Assisi, John the Baptist, Thomas Becket, Mary Magdalene, Moses the Black, Sebastian and Maximillian Kolbe. Joan of Arc kicks off the series on Sunday, with three weekly installments to follow; the last four will stream closer to Easter next year. In naturalistic reenactments followed by brief Scorsese-led discussions with experts, "The Saints" emphasizes that, yes, the saints were very human. They were flawed, imperfect people, which, to Scorsese, only heightens their great sacrifices and gestures of compassion. The Polish priest Kolbe, for example, helped spread antisemitism before, during WWII, sheltering Jews and, ultimately, volunteering to die in the place of a man who had been condemned at Auschwitz. Scorsese, who turns 82 on Sunday, recently met for an interview not long after returning from a trip to his grandfather's hometown in Sicily. He was made an honorary citizen and the experience was still lingering in his mind. Remarks have... Read More