Entertainment marketing agency Wild Card Creative Group (WCCG) has inked a strategic partnership with editor, director, producer and executive Skip Chaisson through which his production shingle Skip Film will set up shop under the WCCG umbrella. The addition of Skip Film bolsters the company’s already established editorial services. Skip Film will also collaborate with WCCG’s creative content studio, 3AM. WCCG will provide full operational support to Skip Film. As an example of the creative work the two entities will execute through this strategic partnership, their latest release was the teaser for Lucasfilm’s highly anticipated Indiana Jones 5. Chaisson founded Skip Film in 2001 as a boutique post company and creative agency specializing in trailers, promos, main titles, commercials, and original content for major studios and streaming platforms. He joined El Rey Network, founded by filmmaker Robert Rodriquez, in 2014 as SVP of creative and on-air promotions, before being upped to CCO in 2016 to shepherd all creative and brand elements for the network’s linear, digital and social feeds. During his time with El Rey, the Skip Film banner shifted focus from entertainment marketing to creating hundreds of hours of content and series production, including Lucha Underground and The Director’s Chair with Robert Rodriguez. Skip Film’s partnership with WCCG will bring the company’s abilities full circle, back to marketing campaign development. Chaisson has more than 20 years as a creative director, EP, network exec, editor and director. Among the feature trailers he’s developed are Braveheart, Armageddon, Gladiator, Gravity, Man on Fire, Mission Impossible and Mission Impossible 2. WCCG and Skip Films hit the ground running. In addition to Indiana Jones 5, they’ve lent their respective editorial expertise to Avatar: The Way of Water, The White Lotus, StarTrek: Strange New Worlds and Till. The Wild Card Editorial team cut the trailers for Black Adam and The Handmaid’s Tale with Chaisson cutting both Star Trek and Till….
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