SHORT CUTS
The Finish Line (TFL), Santa Monica, provided graphic design, visual effects and final conform on Sony Vaio’s "Monks," via Young & Rubicam, Irvine, Calif. Directed by Peggy Sirota of bicoastal HSI Productions, the :30 follows a Tibetan monk as he travels a series of mountain trails to deliver a Sony Vaio laptop to a fellow monk. The man inserts a DVD into the Slim Dock attachment and uses the computer to first view religious services, then a Three Stooges show. TFL credits include online editor/lead effects artist Jon Mueller; and visual effects artists Pete Mayor, Paul Song and Marla Carter. Additionally, May Almy and Teri Yarbrow of TFL’s design team, Magika, created the graphics to compliment the video for the computer screen inserts.
New York-based Spontaneous Combustion designed and animated title sequences and completed the online and color correction for a series of promos for Combat Missions, a new reality series from the producer of Survivor, that will make it’s debut on the USA Network in Jan. 2002. The :30, :20, :15 and :10 promos, collectively titled "Omnibus," and the :15 "Lake" and :10 "Chopper" began airing in mid-September. Spontaneous’ Tony Robins was executive creative director; Dana Yee was design director; Haejin Cho, Gary Tam and Scarlett Kim were designers; Roe Bressan was managing director; Simone Pillinger was executive producer/producer; and Valerie J. McAndrews was assistant producer.
Studio V12 has produced a new branding campaign for Gran Via, the Spanish premium movie and sports channgel. Juan Delcan served as creative director for the effort, and also directed the more than 20 spots that make up the package. The campaign also includes a series of short computer-animated promos. Additional V12 credits include assistant director Tomas Obermaier, and designer Louisa Fitch and freelancer Alan Donhauser, who fleshed out the storyboards and designed the graphic elements.
MUSIC NOTES
San Francisco-headquartered earwax productions has been busy composing music and sound design for various projects. Earwax co-founder Barney Jones cut temporary music for the editorial department of Pixar Animation Studios, Richmond, Calif., for use during the production of the feature Monsters Inc. Jones also composed the score to an academic half-hour documentary for Johns-Hopkins University, about the state of computer-assisted surgery. The piece will be used for Hopkins conferences. Earwax also had sound design and production featured in Dierdre Lynch’s Photos To Send, a feature which is being shown at the Cork Film Festival in Ireland.
STOCK EXCHANGE
National Geographic Television (NGT) Film Library has signed an agreement with Munich-based Telcast to distribute the NGT library of stock footage in the German market. The agreement allows Telcast the right to license more than 2,000 hours of NGT’s footage to clients within the German market, and is being utilized to expedite the transition of format and procurement of footage from NGT’s archives.Footage will be marketed for educational and commercial use in news and commercial productions, corporate marketing, broadcast and new media programming, digital presentations and consumer promotions. The Film Library is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with satellite offices in New York and London.
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 — and those many "Babadook" memes — 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 — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — 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