Marie-Josée Huot has been hired as a producer in the advertising department of Rodeo FX, which maintains studios in Montreal, Los Angeles, Quebec City and Munich. Bringing more than 25 years of experience in high-end postproduction, Huot has worked with clients including Loto-Quebec, IGA, Videotron, St-Hubert, SAAQ, Subway, Toyota, Hyundai, Volkswagen, Bell and Air Canada. Her reputation as a producer and her strong sense of client services were honed during her career in advertising visual effects at Buzz, Mokko Studio, Technicolor and Shed as well as in postproduction, notably at Bureau de Post, Post Moderne and Difuze. She has collaborated with agencies like Sid Lee, Cossette, Bos, BleuBlancRouge, LG2, Y&R and production houses including Soma Pub, Les Enfants, 4Zero1, Cinélande and TVA. Huot joins Rodeo FX at a time of strategic growth for the company as a whole and specifically for its advertising department, which recently appointed Éric Bolduc as executive producer and head of advertising. Recent Rodeo FX Advertising projects include Travis Scott’s latest music clip, Via Rail’s 40th anniversary fully CG spot, as well as Korean Air and Van Houtte’s latest campaigns. Rodeo FX delivers award-winning visual effects for feature films including Academy Award-winner Blade Runner 2049, IT, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, The Fate of the Furious, Kong: Skull Island, Arrival, and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Rodeo FX won a 2018 VES Award for its work on Game of Thrones. Emmy honors include three awards for Game of Thrones (2014, 2015, 2016). More recently, Rodeo FX has won an Animago Award in Munich for Best Visual Effects for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, as well as a Hollywood Professional Association Award for Black Sails….
Growth Brings Growing Pains–and Bots–To Bluesky
Bluesky has seen its user base soar since the U.S. presidential election, boosted by people seeking refuge from Elon Musk's X, which they view as increasingly leaning too far to the right given its owner's support of President-elect Donald Trump, or wanting an alternative to Meta's Threads and its algorithms.
The platform grew out of the company then known as Twitter, championed by its former CEO Jack Dorsey. Its decentralized approach to social networking was eventually intended to replace Twitter's core mechanic. That's unlikely now that the two companies have parted ways. But Bluesky's growth trajectory — with a user base that has more than doubled since October — could make it a serious competitor to other social platforms.
But with growth comes growing pains. It's not just human users who've been flocking to Bluesky but also bots, including those designed to create partisan division or direct users to junk websites.
The skyrocketing user base — now surpassing 25 million — is the biggest test yet for a relatively young platform that has branded itself as a social media alternative free of the problems plaguing its competitors. According to research firm Similarweb, Bluesky added 7.6 million monthly active app users on iOS and Android in November, an increase of 295.4% since October. It also saw 56.2 million desktop and mobile web visits, in the same period, up 189% from October.
Besides the U.S. elections, Bluesky also got a boost when X was briefly banned in Brazil.
"They got this spike in attention, they've crossed the threshold where it is now worth it for people to flood the platform with spam," said Laura Edelson, an assistant professor of computer science at Northeastern University and a member of Issue One's... Read More