VOLT Studios has brought Tom Jacobsen aboard as partner and creative director. Most recently a filmmaker and design director at Pixel Farm, Jacobsen has lent his creative voice to projects on many levels, including directing and animating projects for all screens. Target, 3M, Best Buy, Smirnoff and other noted brands and their respective agencies have collaborated with Jacobsen to bring ideas to life. Jacobsen’s contribution to commercials and music videos has been recognized with honors from the AICP Show and MTV Music Video Awards.
National and international film festivals have screened Jacobsen’s lyrical short films for motionpoems.com, a nonprofit that brings poets and filmmakers together to create compelling hybrid films. His most recent film premiered this October at the Weisman Museum as part of the exhibit “Big Bridges. A Collaboration.” He’s also crafted media for experiential and site specific projects for the Minnesota Twins’ stadium, the Golden State Warriors arena, New York’s Grand Central Station, and the Coca-Cola Theater in Atlanta and the Walker Art Center.
Jacobsen received traditional art training at St. Olaf College and an MFA from UCLA film school. Following graduation from UCLA, Jacobsen worked in Los Angeles as a 3D artist and art director for video games before becoming a lead VFX artist on feature films. His move to Minneapolis, working at both Crash & Sue’s and Pixel Farm, deepened his experience in short form and advertising. Over the years, he has applied his passion for storytelling to a variety of mediums and applications.
“As someone who began as a filmmaker and fine artist, I love the direction the industry is taking,” said Jacobsen. “There’s a growing emphasis on enhanced collaboration, a blurring of traditional lines, both in terms of partnerships and media approaches. The result is a stronger product. VOLT Studios is a great environment to explore and develop what’s next for our clients.”
VOLT Studios collaborates with ad agencies, brands, studios and networks, providing creative production and post services, from concept through completion. At VOLT, Jacobsen will apply his signature blend of filmmaking artistry and strategic thinking to creating visual content for advertising and branded installations.
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival — has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive — a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
The one rule to follow is that... Read More