Outside Editorial and Big Sky Editorial Company, both in New York, and Margarita Mix Santa Monica topped the spot category nominees for the fourth annual Hollywood Post Alliance (HPA) Awards, which recognize creative and technical excellence in the art, science and craft of postproduction.
Outside garnered three nominations while Big Sky and Margarita Mix each earned a pair. Work from Outside and Big Sky accounted for the three nominees in the Outstanding Editing-Commercial category: Outside editor Neil Gust for NASCAR’s “Start Er Up” and Jaguar’s “XF/XK”; and editor Chris Franklin of Big Sky for Bing.com’s “Syndrome.”
For the Outstanding Color Grading-Commercial category, colorist Alex Bickel of Outside scored a nomination for Jaguar’s “XJ Launch Film” while Big Sky’s Valerie Junge earned nominee status on the strength of American Express’ “Members’ Moments.” Rounding out the nominees in the category was colorist Stefan Sonnenfeld of bicoastal Company 3 for Pepsi’s “Pass.”
Company 3 scored another nomination–this one outside the spot realm–for Outstanding Color Grading in TV for colorist Siggy Ferstl on the basis of Yankee Stadium Tribute-Yogi’s Bronx.
Margarita Mix’s two commercial nominees came in the Outstanding Audio Post category, one for mixer Nathan Dubin for Honda Civic’s “Grooves”; and the other for Jeff Levy for Honda Fury’s “Unleashed.” The latter was a shared nomination as Margarita Mix and audio artisans Paul Hurtubise, Richard Cooperman and Thom Blackburn of Santa Monica-based Solid worked on “Unleashed.” Rounding out the category was mixer Parv Thind of Wave Recording Studios, London, for Sony’s “Extreme Detail Bond.”
And the nominees in the remaining spot category, Outstanding Compositing, were: Geoff McAuliffe, Jimi Simmons, Sean McLean and Robin Hobart of Brickyard VFX, Santa Monica and Boston, for NBA’s “Amazing Playoff Moments–Bird Steals The Ball”; Brady Beaubien and Brandon Peterson of Los Angeles-based Interlace Media for the “International Landmark Destruction Campaign” promoting The Day The Earth Stood Still; and Colin Renshaw of Animal Logic, Sydney, for Toyota’s “Ninja Kittens.”
HPA Award winners will be announced and honored during a gala evening ceremony on Nov. 12 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. For a full rundown of nominees spanning the feature and TV categories, log onto www.hpaawardsnet.com.
Already known are the honorees that evening for several other HPA kudos. Ben Burtt will receive the HPA’s Charles S. Swartz Award for Outstanding Contribution in the Field of Post Production. Burtt has worked in every facet of film production for over 35 years spanning directing, producing, sound design, sound editing, editing, voicing and voice design in motion pictures, TV, specialty, educational and documentary. He was the sound designer for the Star Wars and Indiana Jones series, has been nominated for 12 Academy Awards for sound effects work and has won four Oscars.
Meanwhile slated to receive the HPA’s Lifetime Achievement Award is post icon Paul Haggar who rose through the studio ranks from the Paramount mailroom to apprentice editor and ultimately to executive VP of Postproduction for Feature Films, a position he held for more than 20 years.
And finally the HPA Engineering Excellence Award winners are DVS Digital Video Systems for the CLIPSTER hardware and software turnkey finishing system; Signiant for its Content Distribution Management (CDM) software which was developed to centrally manage, secure, accelerate and automate the movement of rich media content; and S.Two Corp. for its OB-1 Uncompressed Digital Recorder, a complete system for providing images from digital cameras to post.
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