The hit CBS TV series “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” will utilize the expertise of the Hollywood-based VFX company Dilated Pixels as its sole VFX vendor for Season 12. The announcement was made today by Dilated Pixels’ founding members, TJ Sakasegawa, Jeff Balis, Rhoades Rader and PJ Foley.
Concurrently, Dilated Pixels has named Emmy Award winner Rik Shorten as its new VFX Supervisor. Shorten, who has served as a VFX Supervisor on over 100 episodes of “CSI” since 2008, will continue in that capacity for Dilated Pixels, during the series 12th season.
“We’re thrilled to have Rik Shorten working with our team,” said Sakasegawa. “Rik has extensive experience as a VFX Supervisor working on major feature films and high profile TV shows, and has played an integral role on ‘CSI’ for many years. We’re looking forward to creating compelling visual effects for ‘CSI’ throughout Season 12, and beyond.”
Adds Louis Milito, Executive Producer, “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” “Dilated Pixels is doing amazing work for us this season. They are redefining the way digital effects are done on a television budget and schedule.”
Said Shorten, “With today’s tight production schedules and tighter budgets, VFX have really come to the forefront as an invaluable production tool. Working with the team at Dilated Pixels, my job will be to understand the visual needs of our client’s production at the script stage, then craft a master plan that gets us the results we’re after. There are so many options out there today, it’s crucial to have a visual blueprint in advance that gives production the flexibility it needs to properly execute our VFX plan. If I’ve done my job well, the director gets what he/she wants, the producers get it for the price that they want, and everyone makes the actors look great!”
In addition to its work on “CSI,” Dilated Pixels also provides visual effects to the FOX series “Fringe,” several shows on the popular SyFy Channel, and numerous other TV series and movies.
About RIK SHORTEN
Rik Shorten has spent 18 years working in the television and film industries. With a BAA from Ryerson University, Shorten has worked in all the major production centers in Canada, the USA, and China. His live action production experience, and VFX specialties have given him a unique skill set in the industry. Rik’s ability for creative collaboration has made him a sought after partner for new projects, as producer, supervisor and director.
Shorten has just started working on Season 12 of “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” a series for which he has previously won both a VES Award and Emmy Award. His other credit highlights include VFX contributions to “Fringe,” “Californication,” “I, Robot,” and “The X-Files”.
About THE FOUNDING MEMBERS OF DILATED PIXELS
• Producer TJ Sakasegawa has a proven ability to develop, finance, produce and distribute a film from beginning to end. His skills have led him to produce over 25 films in his short career, including films for Universal Television Networks, Sony, and 20th Century Fox.
• Producer Jeff Balis produced the blues-infused film “Redemption Road,” directed by Mario Van Peebles, and starring Michael Clarke Duncan and Tom Skerritt. Before that, Balis directed “Still Waiting” for Lionsgate Films, a sequel to the cult-hit restaurant comedy “Waiting,” that he produced with a cast lead by Ryan Reynolds, Justin Long, and Anna Faris.
Balis helped develop the Emmy Award-nominated “Project Greenlight” HBO series, produced “The Battle of Shaker Heights” for Miramax, starring a young Shia LaBeouf, and co-produced the first “Project Greenlight” film “Stolen Summer.” He additionally produced the comic-apocalypse-thriller “Infestation” for Icon Productions, as well as the critical-sensation “Kabluey” starring Lisa Kudrow, and “The Last Time” with Michael Keaton and Brendan Fraser, both for Sony. Balis began his career with Chris Moore, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Sean Bailey at the film/integrated-media company, LivePlanet.
• Producer Rhoades Rader, while working at Ben Stiller’s Red Hour Films, found, packaged, developed and/or produced such films as “Starsky and Hutch,” “Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny,” “Tropic Thunder” and “Dodgeball.” In 2005, Rader left Red Hour Films to produce critically-acclaimed “Kabluey,” starring Lisa Kudrow, “Still Waiting” (the sequel to the hit film “Waiting”) for Lion’s Gate, and the Mario Van Peebles-directed blues music flick “Redemption Road,” starring Michael Clarke Duncan, Taryn Manning, Tom Skerritt and Luke Perry. Rader also produced “Infestation” for Mel Gibson’s Icon Entertainment, a film heavy with CGI effects, and the inspiration for co-founding Dilated Pixels in 2007.
• VFX Producer PJ Foley began his Hollywood career with the words, “Let’s put him on Star Trek,” leading to his immediate work as a visual effects artist on the hit TV series “Star Trek Voyager.” Working in-house for a pioneering visual effects shop, Foley next found himself working on visual effects for the ground-breaking, CG-animated TV series, “Roughnecks: The Starship Trooper Chronicles.” Foley followed up the series work with what would become one of his all-time favorite projects: “Star Trek: The Motion Picture – Director’s Edition” — a restoration project that added many effects that remained unfinished from the 1979 premiere of that film.
Foley next moved into the videogame industry, bringing his Hollywood proven approach to the cinematics team at Westwood Studios in Las Vegas. He returned to Los Angeles in 2003, and has since lent his hand as a VFX Artist, VFX Supervisor, and VFX Producer on such film and television projects as “Hellboy,” “Star Trek Enterprise,” “Battlestar Galactica,” commercial work, “creature features,” and a variety of independent films.
About DILATED PIXELS
Founded in 2007 by Rhoades Rader, Jeff Balis, TJ Sakasegawa and PJ Foley, Dilated Pixels is a full service visual effects, motion graphics, main title and live action production company based in Hollywood, CA. Since its founding, the company has blossomed not only as a noted visual effects house, but also as a one-stop production shop for commercials, music videos, and short-form web content from videogame companies, advertising agencies, brands, and notable directors.
The company’s staff is comprised of VFX artists and supervisors with a wide range of experience across all areas of computer generated visual effects. Dilated Pixels handles all aspects of any size CGI production, including concept design in pre-production, to on-set VFX supervision, and through to the creation of the final CGI elements for film, TV and web. Also featuring HD editing facilities, Dilated Pixels can deliver high-end visual effects through a highly efficient means of creation, maximizing the CGI- production-to-cost ratio for its diverse group of clients.
Clients of Dilated Pixels include FOX, Discovery, SyFy, Sony, Screen Gems, Lionsgate, Universal, Warner Bros., and CBS. The company is located at 6121 Sunset Blvd., Suite # 103, Hollywood, CA, 90028. The phone is 323/466-0930, and the web is www.dilatedpixels.net.
