Multidisciplinary production studio Hornet has promoted four staffers who collectively have worked with the company for more than 30 years.
Kristin Labriola has been promoted to head of creative development, a new role within the Hornet studio. For eight years, Labriola has operated as the development producer at Hornet, where she developed the creative strategy behind Hornet’s commercial pitch process, managed this process logistically and creatively from beginning to end, and helped with director outreach and the continued fostering of Hornet’s director roster.
Cathy Kwan has been promoted to executive producer. Kwan has been with Hornet for close to a decade. Prior to Hornet, she worked in long-form television production for children’s programming, managing relationships with animation studios and seeing to all phases of production. Her role as sr. producer at Hornet has seen her work with a number of major clients, including ongoing campaigns with Facebook. As she moves into her EP role, Kwan will bid and produce jobs along with a more concentrated emphasis on further developing Hornet’s client relationships at Hornet.
Marty Geren has been promoted to sr. producer. Geren has been with Hornet for the last 10 years, the first half of which was as a CG lead before becoming a producer. As Geren moved into his role as a producer, his extensive background in CG modeling, lighting, texturing, and rendering made him the perfect liaison between art and production at Hornet. For nine years, he has led the McDonald’s campaign with Leo Burnett London, one of Hornet’s longest relationships.
And Dez Stavracos has been promoted to sr. producer. With a strong background in 2D animation and six years as a producer at Hornet, Stavracos’ journey to sr. producer has been eclectic and interesting. After studying traditional animation at the School of Visual Arts in New York, he worked for three years as a producer for renowned animator and filmmaker Bill Plympton. Stavracos’ experience with long-form 2D animation—his first “true love”—has made him an invaluable contributor to the 2D department at Hornet. Moving forward, he will continue to produce with an added focus on nurturing and developing the 2D team.
Hornet managing partner Michael Feder said the promotions “are really about empowering a group of wonderfully talented team members who’ve been at the core of Hornet’s evolution over the years.”
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