Longtime creative partners Elliot Lim and Aaron Kemnitzer have teamed to launch Bullpen, a design and animation studio with bases of operation in Brooklyn, NY, and the Northern California community of Menlo Park.
Lim and Kemnitzer open their new venture with over 25 years of combined experience in the motion design industry. After first meeting at design shop Digital Kitchen, the two became fast friends, collaborating off and on ever since. In that time, they have worked with postproduction and animation studios including Buck, Psyop, Gentlemen Scholar, Hornet, and Not to Scale leading to a string of creative successes, most notably a Lim-created animated homage inspired by HBO’s seminal series The Wire.
Lim and Kemnitzer are a directorial duo. The former had most recently been on the roster of Not to Scale while Kemnitzer had been freelancing in Chicago and New York for the past 10-plus years.
With Bullpen, Lim and Kemnitzer are looking to create a new kind of studio defined by its leaner model and hands-on approach–flexible, agile and adaptable to clients’ shifting needs. “Working in the industry, we have learned a lot about the dos and don’ts of servicing projects and clients. That’s why for everything we take on, the client is always assured that both principals of the company, Elliot and I, are fully dedicated to the project,” explained Kemnitzer. “This is unlike other studios where you might be passed to freelancers or less experienced creatives within the company. Also, our lower overhead allows us to be competitive while still remaining nimble enough to expand for bigger projects.”
This approach has already attracted such clients as HP, Amazon and Charles Schwab.
To showcase its creative range, Bullpen is releasing several new projects and animations created especially for its launch. Consisting of a mix of illustrative 2D and 3D short films–from an overweight bumble bee to a factory that produces the alphabet–each piece purposefully plays with different looks, tones and rhythms to show the breadth and impact of well-crafted design.
These shorts all culminate in a text-driven animated video in celebration of the concept of “style,” using a host of techniques to demonstrate how distinct visual elements play a vital role in conveying emotion, shifting expectations and telling a story. According to Lim, this film perfectly encapsulates Bullpen’s abilities and sensibilities. “We’re capable of a lot of different styles. We’re flexible. When you look at these brand films, you can see that diversity of techniques and our love for using style to tell a good story.”
Carrie Coon Relishes Being Part Of An Ensemble–From “The Gilded Age” To “His Three Daughters”
It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in "The Gilded Age," for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of "The White Lotus," which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs' new drama, "His Three Daughters," in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in "Winning Time" ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night's choice: "Once Around," with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" on Broadway in 2012. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
"It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the '50s," Coon says. "I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did... Read More