Visual studio Alma Mater has added executive producer Ben Apley and director Ronnie Koff to its team. Koff joins a roster that includes creative director/director Brian Mah, who co-founded the company with VFX supervisor James Anderson in 2012. He has already completed a CG-driven commercial campaign for GSD&M, and the main title sequence for the upcoming movie from Columbia Pictures, Rough Night.
The appointments mark a reunion for Apley, Mah, Anderson and Koff, who initially met and worked with each other at Imaginary Forces.
Before joining Alma Mater, Apley spent 11 years leading the creative operations of Imaginary Forces’s Los Angeles office. During his time there, he oversaw a wide range of work, including global commercial campaigns, branding and strategy, feature film and entertainment marketing, original series and branded content. Notable clients include Dolby, Facebook, Google, Marvel, and Amazon, as well as multiple agencies, networks, and studios.
Applying his love of design, typography and visual storytelling, Koff began his career at Imaginary Forces in 2004. Working with clients such as IBM, Yoplait, Oral-B and Tropicana, he developed a sharp eye for animation and design over the years. In 2014, he launched boutique creative studio Shuttlecraft, working with such brands as Olay, Kraft, and Hershey’s.
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