Director/cameraman Domenic Mastrippolito has joined Seed Media Arts under the aegis of executive producer Roy Skillicorn. Seed’s new production headquarters have moved to Mastrippolito’s Santa Monica offices and will be helmed by executive producer Tim Ward. After years as a spot director, being nominated for a DGA Award as Best Commercial Director of the Year, Mastrippolito ventured into shooting 2nd unit on features like Davinci Code and Spiderman, and TV shows, including Modern Family. Between longer format assignments, he continued working on spots for Hershey’s, Olay Definity, P&G, Hoover and recently a large package for the NFL promoting the 2017 Super Bowl. Mastrippolito began his career as a cinematographer in Hawaii, shooting sailing and surfing films. He landed his first directing assignments when he was 24 years old and was quickly recognized, on a national scale, shooting campaigns for United, Budweiser, P&G, Clorox, Canon, Taco Bell and DirecTV, among others….Click 3X has added Tim Dingerson as associate creative director and Adam Pearlman as sr. animator. This is Dingerson’s second tour at Click 3X, as he originally held the position of design director for the digital studio. Prior to his return, Dingerson was the creative director/founder of Luckeyou, a boutique design and animation studio based in New York City. Pearlman is also no stranger to Click 3X, as he has been freelancing for the studio since 2010. He has also worked as an animator at FOX Business Network, Trollback & Company, Interspectacular and Blue Room, among others….
Review: Rachel Morrison Makes Feature Directorial Debut With “The Fire Inside”
"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