Riptide Music Group, a synchronization, rights management, and creative company that provides music to advertising, movie trailers, TV programming and promos, major motion pictures, videogames, and multi-media productions, has expanded its creative team with two significant new hires. Janine Kerr, former VP with FOX Sports Music, has been named creative director, and Taylor Amazan, former music supervisor and music producer with Ant Farm, will serve as creative manager for trailers. In addition, Richard Hellstern has been promoted to VP of operations. The announcement was made by Riptide executives Rich Goldman, president, and Keatly Haldeman, CEO.
Riptide’s personnel expansion comes on the heels of the company’s fall 2017 partnership with Mark Ross, who brought to Riptide a multi-million dollar investment to finance the future growth of the business. During the past six months, Riptide has been using the new funding to expand operations and personnel, acquire additional music, and sign and develop new songwriters, producers, and recording artists. Ross, son of legendary music executive Steve Ross (founder and CEO of Warner Communications and former CEO of Time Warner, Inc.), has been active over the last three decades at the highest level of the music business.
SCHROM x Yacht Club and Be Electric Studios Launch Electric XR for Virtual Production
SCHROM x Yacht Club, a full-service live-action, tabletop, and postproduction company, has teamed with Be Electric Studios, a soundstage, equipment rental, and virtual production company, to launch Electric XR, a virtual production collective.
Industry veteran Thomas Rossano will lead the new venture, which provides advanced virtual production solutions across multiple facilities. He brings over 25 years of experience in live-action, tabletop, postproduction and talent curation to enhance Electric XR’s offerings as a resource for brands and agencies, as well as other production companies in need of virtual production solutions. Additionally Rossano continues to serve as EP at XR New York (XR-NY), a role he’s held since December 2022. SCHROM x Yacht Club originally established XR-NY to help provide XR services for third-party rentals. While XR-NY will continue to function independently for SCHROM X Yacht Club, it now operates under the Electric XR umbrella.
Rossano’s expertise spans producing live-action commercials, branded content, interactive and experiential content. In addition to leading Electric XR, he holds responsibilities at SCHROM x Yacht Club which include driving business development, collaborating with sales reps and expanding the company’s creative talent network. Rossano’s career includes serving as an exec producer at Hungry Man for about 11 years, right from that company’s inception. He then went on to become a partner at Station Film where he also had a lengthy tenure. Later he was a partner at PRISM. Then after the pandemic hit, he became a freelance EP for nearly two years, looking into opportunities in virtual production, which led him to XR NY and now Electric XR. Over the years, he has produced high-profile... Read More