Glassworks has added sr. producer Rebecca Johnson and sr. VFX supervisor and lead compositor Urs Furrer to its Amsterdam team. Originally from New Zealand, Johnson has built her career working with a variety of teams on CGI-heavy content for TV, film, and advertising. During her five years at The Mill in London, she helped lead an award-winning team of artists focused on sci-fi and character effects for projects such as Merlin, Primeval, and the critically acclaimed Doctor Who series. A trusted and sought-after freelancer from her time in Barcelona, Johnson recently produced several projects under the Glassworks Creative Studio umbrella, including the CGI and live-action "Small World" campaign for Samsung and the heartwarming character piece for Penny. Other projects produced by Johnson for Glassworks include the animated prologue for Universal Pictures’ Dolittle and the immersive VR experience, Symphony. Furrer first joined Glassworks in 2015 after relocating from Australia. He now returns to the Amsterdam team after a five-year stint at a52 in Los Angeles where he served as VFX supervisor and creative director. He has worked with clients such as Apple, Netflix, Toyota, Microsoft, Nissan, and Honda. Furrer's body of work includes five consecutive years of Super Bowl ads….
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