Experience design firm HUSH has promoted executive producer Kristen DiCamillo to partner–joining founding partners David Schwarz and Erik Karasyk. As the first new partner since the launch of the company nearly 15 years ago, DiCamillo will serve as the managing partner, overseeing and optimizing the company’s success through its processes, operations, and finances.
Formerly an EP at digital agency B-Reel, DiCamillo led the shop’s production teams to create the globe-spanning, UGC-focused MTV Bump platform. Prior to that, she served as a sr. digital producer at Tool, where she produced the multi-award-winning “Clouds Over Cuba” campaign, and at other agencies including BBH, Sid Lee, Saatchi & Saatchi, and Ogilvy Paris.
DiCamillo joined HUSH in 2017 as EP. During her tenure, she has engaged with virtually every project and client at the firm. Of particular note, she spearheaded the development and deployment of multiple, global Partner Center experiences for Facebook. This work involved multi-product strategic storytelling, physical design and technology integration, global scale rollouts, and support approaches that helped to refine HUSH’s approach and processes. She also played critical roles in delivering the sustainability-focused experience design concept for United Therapeutics’ headquarters, and was essential to the success of the experience design and digital storytelling for Uber’s soon-to-be unveiled Mission Bay global headquarters in San Francisco.
“Over the years, I have been focused on project roadmapping, team building, strategic partner collaboration, delivery, and maintenance practices that ultimately make our projects more successful, profitable, and lead to continued client trust and engagement,” DiCamillo stated. “Now, as managing partner, I’m looking forward to finding the balance between running a healthy business and giving the team runway to find new ways of approaching project programs. For me, it’s all about delivering best-in-class strategic, creative, and technological output, created by a team of people who can see and feel the impact of their efforts on projects and the business as a whole.”
DiCamillo will continue to play a role in guiding production, leading projects anchored by the vision and goals of the studio, working closely with Tonian Irving who is being promoted from sr. producer to EP.
With this leadership change, HUSH recommits itself to fostering a vitally diverse set of perspectives to help guide the firm’s next evolution. “There’s a shared responsibility in making sure that we’re living our values in the work we do. I want to continue to drive the company to put more women in leadership and creative roles and to empower the women within our organization to expect the same respect and to be heard at the same level as the strongest male voice in the room,” DiCamillo continued.
HUSH founding partner Schwarz added, “Kristen’s partnership has been something we’ve wanted to make happen for a long time. In virtually every aspect of her time with us, she kept her focus on the company’s success–and making it a byproduct of the success of our people, our clients, our work, and overall culture. She’s also shown incredible dedication through some major milestones in her own life as well as amidst the acute health, wellness, political and cultural challenges in our society at large. Our ultimate goal is that other incredibly talented employees who share similar tenacity and vision will be able to achieve their next level at the firm and can contribute to our collective success.”
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 โ and those many "Babadook" memes โ 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 โ "Bah-Bah-Doooook" โ 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