Global digital production company MediaMonks has appointed S. Jason Prohaska, and Gradwell Sears to the roles of managing director and creative director, respectively. They join Jouke Vuurmans, Ola Björling, David Estis and Nathalie Visser to complete the New York leadership team.
Prohaska has nine years under his belt as partner and managing director of creative digital agency Big Spaceship. He has also held leadership positions at Mattel, Your Majesty Co., Method, and HUSH. He is an original co-founding member of SoDA and began his career building fine art collections and visual imaging platforms for artists, collectors and museum foundations in the U.S. and Europe.
Sears returns to New York from AKQA’s London office where he led global digital creative for Rolls-Royce, Virgin Holidays, MINI and BMW Art Car. He previously lived and worked in New York for over 14 years, developing and directing digital creative output for Kraftworks and Arnold Worldwide.
As managing director, Prohaska will focus on creative business strategy, expanding NA and LATAM synchronization, U.S. talent development and culture building, while Sears will use his expertise to further extend the creative offerings across North and Latin America.
The team as a whole will continue to pave the way in AR/AI and VR under the leadership of Björling, and platforms, big builds and brand campaigns under the leadership of Vuurmans. Estis, who recently led the team for The Pro Walk, a four-room hero fan experience for Amex at the 2016 U.S. Open, will drive concept development across 2D and 3D film, connected experiences and experiential design.
“The use of creative technology is constantly expanding and MediaMonks is at the forefront of that,” said Prohaska. “With so much expertise and inspiring leadership under one roof it’s exciting to be able to work with such a combination of disciplines, from VR, AR-AI and 3D to experiential design and connected platforms. While my role is to bring the New York office to its fun-filled powerhouse potential, I’ll also be directly involved in brand strategy and creative technologies that are driving our industry.”
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More