Design director Leo Nguyen has joined creative studio Carbon VFX. His skillset spans art direction, illustration, 3D, motion graphics and editing. Prior to Carbon VFX, he spent two years at Light of Day as design director and eventually, creative director.
Nguyen has applied his talents to everything from branding to commercials, short films, music videos and broadcast promos. Recently he completed a manifesto for Royal Canin pet food, and the animated Christmas short Window Washer for DDB NY, as well as “The Big Picture,” a collection of shorts scored by acclaimed jazz musician David Krakauer. Nguyen also directed a series of broadcast promos for the 54th and 55th Grammys and Australia’s Next Top Model.
Over his design career, Nguyen has been honored with five PromaxBDA Awards: one International Rocket Award for Best Up-and-Coming Broadcast Designer and four for his design work on hit Australian TV shows Cricket Superstar and Slide. As a director, his short film Paper Boats & Paper Planes was also an official selection at the Sydney International Film Festival in 2010.
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