Entertainment company Alkemy X has secured Astra Reps for national U.S. sales representation. Founded by industry vet Astra Dorf, Astra Reps serves as a creative resource for the media and entertainment industries and beyond. Dorf brings over 25 years of experience across entertainment, media, design, production and digital and social transformation. She began her PR/marketing career at Lee Hunt Associates, a leading entertainment branding agency, specializing in TV network launches, design and brand strategy. She promoted LHA’s award-winning talent through key industry press, events, international conferences and more. When LHA was acquired by Razorfish in 1999, she continued to focus on the broadcast, media and entertainment vertical (NY/LA/UK) until 2001, working with clients including NBC, PBS and Arte. After a hiatus to find her zen while getting certified in Vinyasa Yoga, she launched a freelance lifestyle PR agency, Astra Logicals. After a few years, she was lured back into the industry by a colleague, leading business development for a prominent design and production company. In 2008, Astra leveraged more than a decade of relationships in the industry to launch Astra Reps. In 2015, she took the opportunity to join Mod Op internally as its director of business development before shifting back to relaunching Astra Reps in 2018….
Across the Pond, a London-based independent agency, has appointed Christopher Godfree to the newly created role of head of client services. Reporting directly to global managing director Aaron Hutchinson, Godfree is briefed to develop deeper relationships with clients and to play a key role in furthering the agency’s mission to work with the world’s most innovative tech brands, helping them to make the complex, human. As well as focusing on existing clients including Google, YouTube, Expedia and DeepMind, Godfree will help develop Across the Pond’s global business, with a key focus on EMEA. He will also support the agencies in the U.S., Singapore and Shanghai to advance their account direction expertise. Godfree was previously head of client services at Red Bee Creative, and before that was at JWT (now part of Wunderman Thompson) working on KitKat, DeBeers, HSBC and British Army. His experience also covers brands including Nissan, Netflix, Disney+, Magic Light and Hyundai. In his nine years at Red Bee, Godfree was also business director for BBC, UKTV and a range of branded content clients. Earlier in his career he was based in Tokyo at mobile technology company, Itecjapan, having started out working in the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs….
From Restoring To Hopefully Preserving Multi-Camera Categories At The Emmys
When Gary Baum, ASC won his fourth career Emmy Award earlier this month, it was especially gratifying in that the honor came in a category--Outstanding Cinematography for a Multi-Camera Half-Hour Series--that had been restored thanks in part to a grass-roots initiative among cinematographers to drum up entries. Last year the category fell by the wayside when not enough multi-camera entries materialized.
In his acceptance speech, Baum appealed to the Television Academy to keep multi-camera categories alive. He later noted to SHOOT that editors also got their multi-camera recognition back in the Emmy competition this year. Baum hopes that after resurrecting multi-camera categories in 2024, such recognition will be preserved for 2025 and beyond.
A major factor in the decline of multi-camera submissions in 2023 was the move of certain children’s and family programming from the primetime Emmy competition to the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ (NATAS) Emmy ceremony. For DPs this meant that multi-camera programs last year were reduced to vying for just one primetime nomination slot in the more general Outstanding Cinematography for a Series (Half-Hour) category. It turned out that this single slot was filled in ‘23 by a Baum-lensed episode of How I Met Your Father (Hulu).
Fast forward to this year’s competition and Baum won for another installment of How I Met Your Father--”Okay Fine, It’s A Hurricane,” which turned out to be the series finale. Two of Baum’s Emmy wins over the years have been for How I Met Your Father, and there’s a certain symmetry to them. His initial win for How I Met Your Father was for the pilot in 2022. So he won Emmys for the very first and last... Read More