By BY CAROLYN GIARDINA
NEW YORK-Tape House Digital is relaunching itself this month under a new moniker: Black Logic. The move includes redefining the New York-based company as a creative- and design-driven firm and expanding its services to include live-action direction and production.
"We want to present ourselves as a design and creative entity," explained VP/creative director Michel Suissa, who has already forayed into directing. In recent months, he has directed the live action on such Tape House Digital projects as "Range of Motion" for Ben Gay via Cline, Davis & Mann, New York; Showtime’s "Sci Friday" and "The Wall" promos via Showtime unit The Red Group, New York; and Reading Rainbow’s "New Program Opening" for Lancit Media, New York. Karen Stewart, VP/executive producer, said the company would expand its directorial roster as needed.
Alfie Schloss, VP, marketing, said the company is going after the "highest-end work" and aims to "raise our craft to the next level." Suissa noted that while the house is expanding its repertoire, visual effects would remain its core business.
Tape House Digital opened with seven employees in 1992 as a sister to The Tape House Editorial Company. Today the company employs over 50.
Since last summer, the company has grown its staff. The newest hires include: Gavin Guerra, senior animator; Patricia Heard Greene, computer animator; Jenifer Lee Fogelstrom, computer animator; Sophia Pavlatos, visual effects artist/ designer; and Kelley McDermott, associate producer. The company also grew its capabilities with additional Maya and Softimage 3D stations.
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