Cross-cultural agency the community has tapped Roger Baran, one of Goodby Silverstein & Partners’ most awarded and longstanding creatives, as executive creative director of its San Francisco office, which opened its doors last fall.
In this newly created role, Baran will oversee all creative for the community’s West Coast operation. He will drive innovation for brands including Verizon and Bank of the West, while generating new business for the San Francisco office. Baran will report to co-founder and co-chief creative officer Josรฉ Mollรก.
“Leading an office requires more than just creativity. It’s not easy to find someone with the sensibility to understand our culture, coupled with the drive and creative vision to inspire everyone around them. We clicked with Roger the minute we met,” said Mollรก. “After London, New York, Buenos Aires, and Miami, it’s great to have someone like Roger taking our culture further on the West Coast.”
Baran has developed cutting-edge ideas for a slew of legacy brands. For example, he conceptualized the Emmy-nominated Photoshop 25 campaign, which used over 3,000 layers from more than 150 artists to create a TV commercial celebrating the software’s anniversary during the Oscars. Baran also developed Dalรญ Lives, the Cannes-winning campaign that leveraged Deep Fake technology to bring the artist back to life at the Dalรญ Museum in Florida. His work has been recognized with more than 150 awards, including 14 Cannes Lions, 14 One Show Pencils, and an Emmy nomination.
Baran said of this time at Goodby Silverstein & Partners, “Together, we accomplished a lot of things no one thought was possible. I’ll continue to cheer for them, now silently and a few blocks away.”
Before landing in San Francisco, Baran spent time at Razorfish, Digitas, and Lowe Worldwide (now MullenLowe) in New York.
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