Experience design agency Hush has added Justin Martin as technology director. A versatile technologist who’s honed his craft in a variety of fields from programming and research to engineering and visual effects, Martin joins Hush after spending the last two years at The Barbarian Group, where he last served as senior developer and worked with clients such as Google, Samsung, IBM and Intel.
Along with his Barbarian Group background, Martin has displayed his technical talents in research and engineering efforts while at Look Effects for high-profile feature films such as Darren Aronofsky’s Noah and Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom as well as his personal favorite project, decoding a satellite’s telemetry data using only ‘70s-era mission manuals when it passed by Earth in 2014. “The satellite project required recording a stream of bits from remote radio dishes and writing a decoder that would interpret it into engineering and scientific data,” he explained. “This was possibly the most research-heavy project I’ve done, but it was incredibly rewarding. Also, I learned great words like ‘subcommutation’ and ‘ephemeris’.”
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this โ and those many "Babadook" memes โ unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables โ "Bah-Bah-Doooook" โ an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More