Arts & Letters Creative Co., an independent shop working in advertising and technology with clients such as Google, ESPN and NBC News, has promoted Geoff Castillo to director, where he will be responsible for directing content and film at XYZ, the agency’s in-house production studio. This newly created position comes after a year of growth for the agency which now has 162 employees.
Castillo served as the director on the Google Photos’ “Look at Your Photographs” spot featuring Nickelback. Prior to that, Castillo was an art director at the agency where he has already helped to direct multiple internal productions and was one of the first creative hires in 2017.
Charles Hodges, founder and ECD of Arts and Letters Creative Co., said, “As an agency that makes so much of our work within our walls, it was important to us to have someone (Castillo) leading the charge who understands our entire creative process and the best way to deliver amazing work for our clients.”
Arts & Letters has recently created several projects in-house within XYZ including NBA on ESPN’s “It’s NBA on ESPN Time,” NFL on ESPN’s “Looks Like We Made It” and GPay’s “Make it Happen” campaign.
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