Full-service digital agency Ueno has hired David Navarro as executive creative director for its NYC office and Elisabeth Boonin as U.S. executive technology director. Boonin will work out of the agency’s San Francisco office.
Navarro comes to Ueno from Stink Studios, NY, where he was creative director for the last year in charge of creative, art and design direction on selected projects and pitches. Clients included Alphabet, Samsung, Spotify, Calvin Klein, Pitchfork, Audible, Starbucks and Wired. As digital creative director/head of design for J. Walter Thompson (JWT) in Amsterdam from 2013 to 2016, he built and managed the digital team and oversaw the work of designers. Navarro was the creative and design lead for clients such as ING, Kit Kat, BMW, Puma, MINI and SPA. His work at JWT won a Grand Prix for Creative Data and a Grand Prix Cyber at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2016.
Boonin comes from a background of building software products and teams from the ground up. Most recently, she was chief technology officer at Vela, a web-based platform that allows Etsy sellers to manage and edit their listings. Before that, she was chief technology officer at Rolltape, a social mobile app for sharing audio messages.
“I’ve wanted to hire David for years, but he’s been smart enough to say no. Until now! His creative vision and passion are an inspiration to anyone that sees his work,” said Ueno CEO Halli Thorleifsson. “I can’t think of anyone better suited to lead the creative team in our NYC office.”
Thorleifsson said of Boonin, “From the first time we met, I knew this was the person I wanted to lead our growing U.S. development teams. I’m very excited to see how she will help our already-amazing developers create even better work.”
Navarro will work on the Chubb, Facebook and Reuters accounts at Ueno, while Boonin will handle Chubb, Google, Uninterrupted and Uber. The agency’s other clients include ESPN, Airbnb, Dropbox, Apple, Visa, Fitbit, Verizon and Cisco.
Steven Soderbergh Has A Multi-Faceted “Presence” In His Latest Film
Steven Soderbergh isn't just the director and cinematographer of his latest film. He's also, in a way, its central character.
"Presence" is filmed entirely from the POV of a ghost inside a home a family has just moved into. Soderbergh, who serves as his own cinematographer under the pseudonym Peter Andrews (his father's name), essentially performs as the presence, a floating point-of-view that watches as the violence that killed the mysterious ghost threatens to be repeated.
For even the prolific Soderbergh, the film, which opens Friday in theaters, was a unique challenge. He shot "Presence" with a small digital camera while wearing slippers to soften his steps.
The 62-year-old filmmaker recently met a reporter in a midtown Manhattan hotel in between finishing post-production on his other upcoming movie ("Black Bag," a thriller Focus Features will release March 14) and beginning production in a few weeks on his next project, a romantic comedy that he says "feels like a George Cukor movie."
Soderbergh, whose films include "Out of Sight," the "Ocean's 11" movies, "Magic Mike" and "Erin Brockovich," tends to do a lot in small windows of time. "Presence" took 11 days to film.
That dexterous proficiency has made the ever-experimenting Soderbergh one of Hollywood's most widely respected evaluators of the movie business. In a wide-ranging conversation, he discussed why he thinks streaming is the most destructive force the movies have ever faced and why he's "the cockroach of this industry."
Q: You use pseudonyms for yourself as a cinematographer and editor. Were you tempted to credit yourself as an actor for "Presence"?
SODERBERGH: No, but what I did is subtle. For the first and... Read More