In addition to celebrating the full class of 29 winners from eight countries at last night’s Young Guns 21 awards ceremony in New York, The One Club for Creativity presented additional special recognition to two honorees.
Mischelle Moy received the Young Guns 21 Creative Choice Award. The accolade is the result of a public vote by the global creative community who reviewed work of all YG21 winners and picked the one they believe stands above all others.
Moy, who is also this year’s winner of The One Club COLORFUL grant program for BIPOC creatives, is a Brooklyn-born-and-based digital artist and product photographer. Also skilled in set design and postproduction, she has worked with prominent brands such as Apple and Adobe, as well as local small businesses including Wing on Wo, Cirque Colors, and Umamicart.
Suzanne Saroff, a photographer and director also based in Brooklyn, was presented with this year’s Artist In Residence Award from international artists management agency and Young Guns sponsor Levine/Leavitt.
The honor is bestowed on the newly crowned Young Gun whose body of work stands out, as judged by an advisory board of industry professionals across a range of disciplines. As this year’s winner, Saroff will receive a full year of professional development, guidance and mentorship from Levine/Leavitt to help advance her career.
Saroff’s body of work is still-life focused. Using a multimedia approach and experimentation with new ways to work with light and composition, she often builds technical sets in her studio and then breaks commonly held creative rules. Her commercial clients include Prada, Gucci, Glossier, Bvlgari, NARS, Benjamin Moore, Tin Building, Clinique, and Haus Labs, and her photographs have also been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and many others.
“As we are honored to celebrate our ninth year with the Young Guns, we’re thrilled to have Suzanne Saroff join us as the Levine/Leavitt Artist in Residence,” said Jeff Levine, co-founder. “Suzanne’s photography captures the extraordinary in the everyday, with a style that’s both bold and nuanced. We’re excited to see how her fresh perspective will inspire all of us in the coming year.”
Young Guns is the industry’s only international, cross-disciplinary, portfolio-based awards competition that identifies today’s vanguard of young creatives age 30 and under.
This year’s entries were judged by a diverse jury of 100 top creatives from 47 countries, many of whom are past YG winners.
This year’s winners were celebrated last night at a special ceremony and party at New York’s Sony Hall hosted by famed designer, author, educator, and “Design Matters” podcaster Debbie Millman. The full lineup of winners was unveiled earlier this month and reported on here in SHOOT.
All Young Guns winners receive a unique version of the iconic Young Guns Cube, designed exclusively for this year’s incoming class, and have their permanent profile page added to the Young Guns website. Winners also get a complimentary one-year One Club for Creativity membership, permanent membership in the Young Guns network, and a chance to be featured in Young Guns events.
Program branding and design of the YG Cube award itself is reimagined each year by a past Young Gun winner. This year’s YG21 branding was created by Zuzanna Rogatty (YG18), senior designer at COLLINS New York.
SCHROM x Yacht Club and Be Electric Studios Launch Electric XR for Virtual Production
SCHROM x Yacht Club, a full-service live-action, tabletop, and postproduction company, has teamed with Be Electric Studios, a soundstage, equipment rental, and virtual production company, to launch Electric XR, a virtual production collective.
Industry veteran Thomas Rossano will lead the new venture, which provides advanced virtual production solutions across multiple facilities. He brings over 25 years of experience in live-action, tabletop, postproduction and talent curation to enhance Electric XR’s offerings as a resource for brands and agencies, as well as other production companies in need of virtual production solutions. Additionally Rossano continues to serve as EP at XR New York (XR-NY), a role he’s held since December 2022. SCHROM x Yacht Club originally established XR-NY to help provide XR services for third-party rentals. While XR-NY will continue to function independently for SCHROM X Yacht Club, it now operates under the Electric XR umbrella.
Rossano’s expertise spans producing live-action commercials, branded content, interactive and experiential content. In addition to leading Electric XR, he holds responsibilities at SCHROM x Yacht Club which include driving business development, collaborating with sales reps and expanding the company’s creative talent network. Rossano’s career includes serving as an exec producer at Hungry Man for about 11 years, right from that company’s inception. He then went on to become a partner at Station Film where he also had a lengthy tenure. Later he was a partner at PRISM. Then after the pandemic hit, he became a freelance EP for nearly two years, looking into opportunities in virtual production, which led him to XR NY and now Electric XR. Over the years, he has produced high-profile... Read More