Visual effects executive producer Michael Pardee, most recently head of the commercials division at the recently shuttered Asylum, has launched The Mission, a Venice-based effects/animation/post house. Joining Pardee in the new venture are former Asylum colleagues Rob Trent as creative director/visual effects supervisor and Piotr Karwas as animation director.
The Mission made its spot debut during the Super Bowl with the Chevy :30 titled “Tommy” directed by Speck/Gordon of Furlined for Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. “Tommy” features a brazen father using his Chevy Silverado HD to courageously save his accident-prone son from such unlikely situations as falling down a well, being stranded in a hot air balloon, being stuck in the belly of a whale and even a tumble into the crux of an erupting volcano. The Mission produced the Super Bowl commercial’s CG whale sequence.
Currently The Mission is in the midst of spots for Hershey’s Kisses, Rexona, T-Mobile and U.S. Bank. The boutique company, based in a converted mission-style house, is also in the market for feature film assignments.
Trent’s credits include work on such feature films as G-Force, Solaris and Minority Report. In 2008, he won the Visual Effects Society Award for Best Compositing in a Commercial on the basis of Nike’s “Leave Nothing” directed by Michael Mann via Alturas Films. Recently Trent supervised and served as lead Inferno artist on GMC’s all-CG spots “Build” and “Outside” for Leo Burnett.
Karwas has been active in VFX for film, TV and commercials for more than a decade, first at Digital Domain and then Asylum. He has contributed to such high-profile movies as The Lord of the Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and I, Robot, as well as spots for Hershey, GMC and Microsoft, among many others.
Prior to Asylum, Pardee served as head of production for Digital Domain. His recent work at Asylum included Activision’s star-studded Call of Duty: Black Ops spot, “There’s A Soldier In All Of Us,” directed by Rupert Sanders of MJZ for TBWAChiatDay, Los Angeles.
The Mission has secured independent reps Tracy Bernard and Robin Stevens to handle the Midwest. Negotiations are underway for representation out East and on the West Coast.
Review: Director Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17” Starring Robert Pattinson
So you think YOUR job is bad?
Sorry if we seem to be lacking empathy here. But however crummy you think your 9-5 routine is, it'll never be as bad as Robert Pattinson's in Bong Joon Ho's "Mickey 17" — nor will any job, on Earth or any planet, approach this level of misery.
Mickey, you see, is an "Expendable," and by this we don't mean he's a cast member in yet another sequel to Sylvester Stallone's tired band of mercenaries ("Expend17ables"?). No, even worse! He's literally expendable, in that his job description requires that he die, over and over, in the worst possible ways, only to be "reprinted" once again as the next Mickey.
And from here stems the good news, besides the excellent Pattinson, whom we hope got hazard pay, about Bong's hotly anticipated follow-up to "Parasite." There's creativity to spare, and much of it surrounds the ways he finds for his lead character to expire — again and again.
The bad news, besides, well, all the death, is that much of this film devolves into narrative chaos, bloat and excess. In so many ways, the always inventive Bong just doesn't know where to stop. It hardly seems a surprise that the sci-fi novel, by Edward Ashton, he's adapting here is called "Mickey7" — Bong decided to add 10 more Mickeys.
The first act, though, is crackling. We begin with Mickey lying alone at the bottom of a crevasse, having barely survived a fall. It is the year 2058, and he's part of a colonizing expedition from Earth to a far-off planet. He's surely about to die. In fact, the outcome is so expected that his friend Timo (Steven Yeun), staring down the crevasse, asks casually: "Haven't you died yet?"
How did Mickey get here? We flash back to Earth, where Mickey and Timo ran afoul of a villainous loan... Read More