Robert Mackenzie knows a thing or two about the creation of soundscapes to advance storytelling in film. In 2017 he garnered a Best Sound Mixing Oscar, the Motion Picture Sound Editors Guild Award and the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Award (AACTA) for his work on Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge . That same year Mackenzie won another AACTA, for sound design--as well as scoring a BAFTA nomination--for Garth Davis’ internationally acclaimed film, Lion . Mackenzie has a track record... Read More 

LOS ANGELES -- Zola topped the Film Independent Spirit Awards with seven nominations spanning the Best Feature, Director (Janicza Bravo), Screenplay (Bravo and Jeremy O. Harris), Cinematography (Ari Wegner), Editing (Joi McMillon), Female Lead (Taylour Paige) and Supporting Male (Colman Domingo) categories. Close behind with five nods was The Novice for Best Feature, Director (Lauren Hadaway), Editing (Hadaway and Nathan Nugent), Female Lead (Isabelle Fuhrman) and Supporting Female (Amy Forsyth). Tied with 4... Read More 

LOS ANGELES -- The Critics Choice Association (CCA) unveiled the film category nominees for the 27th Annual Critics Choice Awards. “Belfast” from Focus Features and “West Side Story” from 20th Century Studios lead this year’s film contenders, earning 11 nominations each. In addition to Best Picture, “Belfast” racked up several acting nominations including Best Supporting Actor nods for both Jamie Dornan and Ciarán Hinds, Best Supporting Actress for Caitríona Balfe, Best Young Actor/Actress for Jude Hill, and... Read More 

NEW YORK (AP) -- After widespread criticism forced the organization that puts on the Golden Globes to lose its televised award show and overhaul its membership, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association nevertheless went ahead announcing nominees for film and television awards on Monday despite a skeptical entertainment industry. Just as it's done for many years, the HFPA gathered reporters at the Beverly Hilton to announce its picks for the 79th Golden Globes. But this time, there was no nationally televised... Read More 

LONDON -- The U.K.’s leading film critics have unveiled the nominations for the 42nd annual London Critics’ Circle Film Awards, with three films from female filmmakers coming out on top. Leading the field is director Jane Campion’s psychological western The Power of the Dog, which scored nine nominations. Next, with six and five nominations respectively, are first-time director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Elena Ferrante adaptation The Lost Daughter and British auteur Joanna Hogg’s cine-memoir The Souvenir Part... Read More 

NEW YORK & LOS ANGELES -- The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) and Television Academy have jointly announced plans to realign the Daytime and Primetime Emmy® Awards. Moving forward, the competitions will be organized solely by content genre as opposed to the current method, which separates programs based on program airtime. The announcement, which follows the Academies’ recent collaboration on expanding the Children’s & Family Emmy Awards into a standalone franchise, represents a transition... Read More 

A decade after his double Cannes Grand Prix-winning stop-motion short, Back to the Start , changed the global conversation around animal welfare, director Johnny Kelly of Nexus Studios, London and L.A., returns with a continuation of the farming family epic with the focus this time on human welfare. Teaming up with the ad agency Observatory and the Chipotle Cultivate Foundation, A Future Begins is told through exceptionally crafted stop-motion and set to a soundtrack by Grammy-award winning... Read More 

Getting back on the farm for Chipotle or visiting the whimsical "Whoopsery" for Chick-fil-A, SHOOT 's Q4 VFX & Animation Chart takes us to varied destinations. In one spot, a dinosaur even ends up at the United Nations to address climate change. We are even asked to navigate a time warp in Lidl's Xmas spot. And feature filmmaker Joe Wright (director of the lauded new feature Cyrano ) puts us in a stop motion world in his "Princess & Peppernose" short. These are just some of the notable... Read More 

George A. Romero’s 1968 cult horror feature classic Night of the Living Dead provided creative inspiration for Run The Jewels’ “Never Look Back” music video. Consisting of Killer Mike and E1-P, the Run The Jewels hip-hop group had showcased the track on its “RTJ4, album which came out last year. The video of the track premiered at last month’s Adult Swim Festival in Los Angeles. Directed by John Hillcoat--whose credits include the acclaimed features The Road and The Proposition --the “Never... Read More 

From a Run The Jewels' music video that's meshed with George Romero's cult classic feature The Night of the Living Dead to an "Unspoken" tale for Halo Infinite that gives a new poignant dimension to video game advertising, SHOOT's 4th quarter Top Ten Tracks Music Chart runs the gamut. Among the other Chart entries are a "Magical" World Market spot which features a soundscape crafted from an Xmaas get-together, a whimsical visit to the "Whoopsery" for Chick-fil-A, and a journey in an electric... Read More 

LOS ANGELES -- The Television Academy, in partnership with ReadySet, has completed a rigorous evaluation of its membership, as well as its overall policies, procedures and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and has identified key focus areas and developed strategic goals to drive systemic change across the organization. Prioritizing DEI across the Academy’s own membership and the entertainment industry, and to impact its role as a thought leader in the television space, the organization... Read More 

NEW YORK -- Half of the marketers responding to a recent survey indicated that they ran advertising in the past year featuring identifiable LGBTQ+ casting, the ANA announced today. The report, “LGBTQ+ Marketing Inclusion” was the first of its kind and, despite the lack of previous data, the ANA said the results were a positive indicator of overall LGBTQ+ marketing inclusion. “If this survey was taken 20 years ago, or even 10, the results would look quite different, with LGBTQ+ casting much lower,” the... Read More 

LOS ANGELES -- International production company Stink Films has added director Camila Zapiola to its roster for commercials and advertising content representation in the U.S., Asia, Brazil and the Czech Republic. She is a groundbreaker as an accomplished comedy director, an arena that has typically been the province of male helmers. While Stink handles Zapiola in the mainstream general market for American work, she continues to be repped by Joinery_X for U.S. Hispanic agency jobs. Joinery_X also reps her in... Read More 

NEW YORK -- Abe Baginsky is joining JOAN Creative as executive creative director. Baginsky will report to JOAN’s co-founder and chief creative officer Jaime Robinson and work alongside Lauren Costa, who was appointed ECD last year. Baginsky previously served in an ECD role at Ogilvy New York and held the position of creative director at Mother New York. “Abe is a killer creative and an even better creative leader. He pushes the entire team, across departments, to bring their most daring creative selves,”... Read More 

PARIS -- The 2021 Epica Award judges have selected two Film Grand Prix winners: The Danish Road Safety Council’s comedic and cinematic “Helmet Has Always Been a Good Idea” from agency &Co./NoA Denmark and directed by Tore Frandsen of Stockholm production house new-land; and Burberry’s dance-driven “Festive” directed by the Megaforce collective via production company Riff Raff Films, London. Mie Schaffalitzky, account director at &Co./NoA, said, “It feels amazing that a truly local film can... Read More 

BOSTON -- Seyhan Lee, the Boston-based creative studio that specializes in employing Artificial Intelligence in the creation of motion pictures, has brought advertising and design vet Gary Koepke aboard as a partner. Koepke will be joining Seyhan Lee founder Pinar Seyhan Demirdağ as the company expands its portfolio of A.I. motion picture projects into the metaverse with work on NFTs and other new media forms. The move caps a busy summer and fall for Seyhan Lee. It launched to acclaim earlier this year... Read More 

SAN FRANCISCO -- Camp + King, a creative agency with offices in San Francisco and Chicago, has promoted executive producer Garrett DeLorm to director of production, effective January 1, 2022. DeLorm will work closely with executive creative directors Rikesh Lal and Jesse Dillow as he oversees the production department, the team of producers, and the Content Lab, which is Camp + King’s in-house content creation arm. For nearly two decades, DeLorm has solved creative problems across a myriad of production... Read More 

ROCHESTER, NY -- Partners + Napier has made three key hires, bringing aboard Costa Boudouvas as group creative director, creative technology, Jason Ziehm as associate creative director and copywriter, and George Mazzoli as director of paid search. Boudouvas most recently served as VP and associate creative director at MullenLowe. Ziehm comes over to Partners + Napier after six years at Digitas. And Mazzoli had previously been associate director of paid search at MediaCom. Boudouvas is a digital creative whose... Read More 

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- This year’s inductees into the National Film Registry include an epic Star Wars and Lord of the Ring films, projects starring Jennifer Lopez and the late Cicely Tyson along with films that took on racially motivated violence against people of color. The Library of Congress announced Tuesday that films including “Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi,” “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” are among the 25 movies tapped for preservation this year... Read More 

NEW YORK -- The AMP Awards for Music & Sound has announced its return as a live, in-person event in 2022. The unofficial “loudest show in the industry” will rock the stage when it comes back to Sony Hall in New York City on Tuesday, May 24, 2022. An official AMP Awards call for entries, which signals the opening of the online entry portal, will be announced in the new year, as will more news and details about the competition, including naming of the AMP Awards Show chair for 2022. “We’re so excited to... Read More 

NEW YORK (AP) -- Despite critical acclaim and two years-worth of anticipation, Steven Spielberg's lavish "West Side Story" revival made little noise at the box office, debuting with $10.5 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday — a worrisome result for a movie industry struggling to recapture its finger-snapping rhythm. A dazzling widescreen adaptation and Spielberg's first musical, "West Side Story" was one of the year's most eagerly awaited titles. With a script by Tony Kushner and Rita... Read More 

A title like " Nightmare Alley," especially when paired with a filmmaker like Guillermo del Toro, suggests a certain kind of movie. Del Toro, the director of "The Shape of Water" and "Pan's Labyrinth," has a signature style after all. But "Nightmare Alley" is not about a haunted house or the supernatural. It's a noir that's rooted in a recognizable, if heightened, reality about the brief rise of a handsome hustler from low level carney to highly paid showman. And it is a decadent feast, in its... Read More 

Motherhood. It's such a rich subject for art to ponder, you'd think we'd have already seen every kind of mother onscreen. But actually we haven't. Sure, we've seen good moms, bad moms, crazy moms, selfish moms, generous moms, loving moms, cold moms. But what strikes home so vividly in "The Lost Daughter," Maggie Gyllenhaal's gorgeous directorial debut, is how rarely we see a mother who is all those things at once. And yet honestly, what could be more real than that? On my first viewing of... Read More 

Spider-Man movies have come in such flurries over the last two decades that you could almost tell time by them. Who needs the long centuries of the Triassic, Jurassic and the Cretaceous, when, in the span of just one generation you can have the Tobey epoch, the Garfield era and the Tomozoic? The franchise's constant (and contractual) regenerative velocity has by now become a familiar punchline. But in "Spider-Man: No Way Home," the distinct, if cluttered, time zones of Marvel's webslinger... Read More 

LONDON (AP) -- The European Union's ambitious plan to update its pioneering internet rules gained momentum Tuesday after a key committee passed measures requiring technology companies to better police content and lawmakers prepared to vote on regulations to rein in Big Tech. The 27-nation bloc has for the past year been drafting a sweeping overhaul of regulations for digital companies, aimed at making sure tech giants like Google and Facebook, now renamed Meta, treat rivals fairly and protect users on their... Read More 

LONDON (AP) -- Proposed British rules aimed at cracking down on harmful online content should be beefed up with tougher measures like making it illegal to send unsolicited graphic images, requiring porn sites to ensure children can't gain access and moving faster to hold tech executives criminally liable for failing to uphold the regulations, lawmakers said in a new report. The committee of lawmakers recommended a series of major changes to the U.K. government's draft online safety bill early Tuesday that... Read More 

NEW YORK (AP) -- Everything old is new again — at least for ABC's audience. The network's special, star-filled live presentations of old episodes of "The Facts of Life" and "Diff'rent Strokes" reached some 4.8 million viewers last week, the Nielsen company said. That wasn't earth-shattering, and didn't even crack Nielsen's list of top 30 programs. But it was the network's most-watched program. With stars like Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Hart, John Lithgow, Jon Stewart and Snoop Dogg, the annual exercise hosted by... Read More 

Stories of love are always a holiday classic. And in Chevy’s holiday film, it’s felt through the joyful and sometimes painful memories centered around a classic 1966 Chevy Impala. Based on actual events, this long-form spot titled “Holiday Ride” saw agency Commonwealth//McCann team up with Academy Award winners Tom Hooper (director), Claudio Miranda (director of photography) and Rachel Portman (composer) to tell the story of love, redemption and restoration--because the greatest gift anyone can... Read More 

Air Canada is embracing the magic of the season with a spot that shares a message of togetherness for the first holiday many Canadians will spend together in two years. Just like so many of us that have been apart, feeling like we have been living in a bubble, the video shows a story of two people who are separated by their glass snow globe. Titled “‘Tis the Season to Believe,” this spot is a mix of live-action and stop motion animation, a first for Air Canada. The piece was created by FCB... Read More 

Grandma Ursula from Merge Mansion is raking up a mystery with the Oscar-winning Kathy Bates portraying her in the debut brand films from the puzzle game. The hit mobile puzzle game that has people buzzing about the characters behind the screen launched globally earlier this year and has close to 20 million downloads. The very first live-action Merge Mansion brand campaign crafts a playful and suspicious tone as Grandma Ursula is determined to make her granddaughter Maddie’s search for answers... Read More 

Park Pictures’ Nathan Price directed this spot, “The Dancer,” for the Bank of New Zealand, produced by his New Zealand-based production company, Ruskin. The 90-second commercial follows a teenage boy in rural New Zealand who loves dancing. His story of isolation is set to a stripped-back cover of Robyn’s song, “Dancing On My Own.” At the spot’s reveal we see that while isolated in a place where dance instruction might be hard to come by, he’s connected through an online dance school. Price is... Read More 

It’s a well-known tradition to leave out a plate of cookies for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve--the normal chocolate chip, sugar cookies, etc. But here we see the surprise, excitement, and that elevated “ooooohhhh” that Santa is overcome with being left Milano cookies vs. the usual suspects in this spot directed by Lena Beug of Station Film for Saatchi & Saatchi New York. In fact, Santa is inspired to get a bit fancy himself after getting a bite from a Pepperidge Farms’ Milano treat. The... Read More 

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