Directors Emilie Badenhorst and Thibault Dumoulin have signed with international creative production company Couscous for their first U.S. commercial production representation. They add to the culturally diverse company roster as Badenhorst and Dumoulin are based in South Africa and Ireland, respectively.
Badenhorst’s credits include branded projects for Bonobo Jeans, Puma and Woolworths, and music videos for artists including Romeo Elvis, 6lack, Khalid and Lolo Zouai.
Allowing her subjects their natural abilities and inspirations to help shape her work, Badenhorst strives to express the need for connection between people and to create a voice of hope. Her aim is for the viewer to have a visceral experience of what it means to be human. The director’s collaborative execution and a tendency toward raw honesty are most evident in her branded projects for
Badenhorst has conceptualized, written and directed a number of film projects including Bubblegum, a fashion film nominated for both Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction at the Bokeh International Fashion Film Festival. Badenhorst was recently nominated as one of the Top Five New Female Directors to Watch in South Africa by the advertising and creative showcase 10 & 5.
Born in Johannesburg, and raised in the coastal town Strand outside Cape Town, she graduated from The University of Cape Town in Theatre and Performance, with a focus on performance directing. Badenhorst recently completed the short film ekstasis, co-written and directed with friend and collaborator Kanya Viljoen, based on the landscape of multilingualism in South Africa, the Afrikaner culture and LGBTQIA+ bodies.
Thibault Dumoulin
Influenced by his journalism and documentary filmmaking studies, director Dumoulin lends his signature sense of adventure and freedom to docu-style work for brands including Nike, Nikon, Adidas, HP, and Peugeot, and in music videos for artists such as Citizens, Clement Froissart, Feder, Natas Loves You, Hollysiz, Rover, Fhin and more. Thibault has been awarded Best Director at the BMVA, his videos selected by Vimeo Staff Picks, and he has won Best International Music Video of the Year at Festival de Cortos de Bogotá.
Growing up in Western France, he credits his creative inspiration to his mother, who often traveled internationally and would paint landscapes based on photographs of far-flung locales. He picked up the camera thereafter and cut his teeth helming skate culture and other adventure-based films, documentaries and photo series, before segueing to music video work. He now lives in West Ireland, in a village of artists and surfers off the coast.
Couscous partner/director Bear Damen said, “Being able to offer talent that is culturally expansive is important to us at Couscous. With the addition of Emilie and Thibault, we open the door to more globally-conscious productions and the chance to create work that stands out and is uniquely compelling.”
From Restoring To Hopefully Preserving Multi-Camera Categories At The Emmys
When Gary Baum, ASC won his fourth career Emmy Award earlier this month, it was especially gratifying in that the honor came in a category--Outstanding Cinematography for a Multi-Camera Half-Hour Series--that had been restored thanks in part to a grass-roots initiative among cinematographers to drum up entries. Last year the category fell by the wayside when not enough multi-camera entries materialized.
In his acceptance speech, Baum appealed to the Television Academy to keep multi-camera categories alive. He later noted to SHOOT that editors also got their multi-camera recognition back in the Emmy competition this year. Baum hopes that after resurrecting multi-camera categories in 2024, such recognition will be preserved for 2025 and beyond.
A major factor in the decline of multi-camera submissions in 2023 was the move of certain children’s and family programming from the primetime Emmy competition to the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ (NATAS) Emmy ceremony. For DPs this meant that multi-camera programs last year were reduced to vying for just one primetime nomination slot in the more general Outstanding Cinematography for a Series (Half-Hour) category. It turned out that this single slot was filled in ‘23 by a Baum-lensed episode of How I Met Your Father (Hulu).
Fast forward to this year’s competition and Baum won for another installment of How I Met Your Father--”Okay Fine, It’s A Hurricane,” which turned out to be the series finale. Two of Baum’s Emmy wins over the years have been for How I Met Your Father, and there’s a certain symmetry to them. His initial win for How I Met Your Father was for the pilot in 2022. So he won Emmys for the very first and last... Read More