Ogilvy Health has hired strategist Liz Kane to lead the agency’s insights, brand and medical strategy offerings. Ogilvy also promoted Corina Kellam, who will lead a newly-formed experience & innovation team. Kane’s consumer and health advocacy experience includes award-winning work for Novartis and GSK. Prior to joining Ogilvy Health, Kane was head of brand strategy at Havas Life, where she led efforts for Pfizer and Amgen. Other past roles include global consumer advertising at Saatchi & Saatchi and Leo Burnett. Kellam, who joined Ogilvy Health last year, has therapeutic experience that ranges from rare disease to wellness brands to medical devices….
Framestore has promoted Johannes Sambs to head of CG, London. Sambs joined Framestore in 2016, where he has been instrumental in a number of major projects including Framestore’s first dark ride, Pearl Quest for China’s Wanda Group, and the technically challenging immersive experience for Comcast’s Philadelphia based planetarium-style theater, the Universal Sphere. Sambs was also Framestore’s CG supervisor on Netflix’s Alien Worlds which won an Emmy for the studio. Shortly afterwards Sambs delivered the storybook sequences for Netflix’s Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey. Originally from Austria, Sambs studied audiovisual fine art before moving to the U.K. where he worked as a CG generalist freelancer, mainly in advertising as well as theater productions. He joined Framestore as a lookdev artist and has subsequently worked as both CG supervisor and VFX supervisor across many forms including commercials, TV shows and feature films including the Sky Atlantic episodic show, Curfew….
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