By Robert Goldrich
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. --For the second consecutive year, Kim Gehrig of Somesuch has won the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award recognizing Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Commercials, This time around, during a gala awards ceremony on Saturday evening (2/10) at the Beverly Hilton, Gehrig earned the Guild honor on the strength of two entries: "Run This Town," a client-direct spot for Apple; and Expedia's "The Travelers" out of Wieden+Kennedy.
Last year Gehrig became just the second woman director to win the DGA's spotmaking award. The first was Melina Matsoukas of PRETTYBIRD three years ago. Now Gehrig becomes the first woman to win the honor twice.
In her acceptance remarks, Gehrig thanked the DGA for making her "feel so supported," her collegues at Somesuch, including company founding partners Sally Campbell and Tim Nash, and first assistant directors David Webb and Zaida Fakih who worked, respectively, on "Run This Town" and "The Travelers."
Gehrig also expresed gratitude to her fellow nominees in the commercials category: Martin de Thurah of Epoch Films; Seb Edwards of Park Pictures; Craig Gillespie of MJZ; and Andreas Nilsson of Biscuit Filmworks. She credited all their work with inspiring her,
Gehrig additionally gave a shout-out to Greta Gerwig, who was in the audience as a DGA Award feature film nominee for Barbie. Gehrig thanked Gerwig for being a major source of inspiration to her and many others.
SCHROM x Yacht Club and Be Electric Studios Launch Electric XR for Virtual Production
SCHROM x Yacht Club, a full-service live-action, tabletop, and postproduction company, has teamed with Be Electric Studios, a soundstage, equipment rental, and virtual production company, to launch Electric XR, a virtual production collective.
Industry veteran Thomas Rossano will lead the new venture, which provides advanced virtual production solutions across multiple facilities. He brings over 25 years of experience in live-action, tabletop, postproduction and talent curation to enhance Electric XR’s offerings as a resource for brands and agencies, as well as other production companies in need of virtual production solutions. Additionally Rossano continues to serve as EP at XR New York (XR-NY), a role he’s held since December 2022. SCHROM x Yacht Club originally established XR-NY to help provide XR services for third-party rentals. While XR-NY will continue to function independently for SCHROM X Yacht Club, it now operates under the Electric XR umbrella.
Rossano’s expertise spans producing live-action commercials, branded content, interactive and experiential content. In addition to leading Electric XR, he holds responsibilities at SCHROM x Yacht Club which include driving business development, collaborating with sales reps and expanding the company’s creative talent network. Rossano’s career includes serving as an exec producer at Hungry Man for about 11 years, right from that company’s inception. He then went on to become a partner at Station Film where he also had a lengthy tenure. Later he was a partner at PRISM. Then after the pandemic hit, he became a freelance EP for nearly two years, looking into opportunities in virtual production, which led him to XR NY and now Electric XR. Over the years, he has produced high-profile... Read More