InterviewsMovie

Director Erick Oh, Producer Maureen Fan Interview: Namoo

thedhk

Welcome back Academy Award nominated director Erick Oh and welcome to Baobab Studios CEO Maureen Fan. We chat about their new short animated film Namoo, embracing new technology, what the metaverse will mean for storytelling, and more!

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0vRX0MtKI8VXPRgoxArn9w?si=U5wZUYGrRh-ZTikkfTDmLA

More about Namoo:

Written and directed by Oscar®-nominated Erick Oh (Opera), Namoo is a hand-crafted, narrative poem come to life. Inspired by the passing of Erick’s grandfather, Namoo — which translates to “Tree” in Korean — marks Oh’s most personal work to date. The film follows the beautiful and heartbreaking moments of a man’s life, from beginning to end.

More about Erick Oh:

Erick Oh is a Korean artist and filmmaker based in California, USA. His films have been introduced and awarded at numerous film festivals including the Academy Awards, Annie Awards, Annecy Animation Festival, Zagreb Film Festival, SIGGRAPH, Anima Mundi and more. With his background in fine art at Seoul National University (Korea) and film at UCLA (USA), Erick became an animator at Pixar Animation Studios from 2010 to 2016. Erick then part-time joined Tonko House with his fellow former Pixar artists and directed ‘PIG : The Dam Keeper Poems’ which won the Cristal Award at Annecy Animation Festival 2018. Erick is currently working on a variety of projects with his partners in film/animation, VR/AR industry and contemporary art scenes in the US and South Korea.

More about Maureen Fan:

Maureen has held leadership roles in film, gaming and the consumer web. Fan was most recently VP of Games at Zynga, where she oversaw three game studios including FarmVille, which contributed 40% of the company’s revenues. Previously, she worked on Pixar’s Toy Story 3 film and at eBay in product management and UI design. Her collaboration, The Dam Keeper, directed by Dice Tsutsumi and Robert Kondo, was nominated for the 2015 Oscar Best Animated Short. Maureen was named one of ‘The Most Creative People of the Year’ by Ad Age, Top 100 Influential Asians by A100, and Variety crowned her as one of the execs to watch earning a spot on their ‘Top Digital Creatives’ list.  As an advocate for diversity in the entertainment, Maureen is an active member of many organizations for minority groups and women and she gave the keynote at Grace Hopper Conference, as well as presented at Women in Animation, Fortune Most Powerful Women Next Gen Summit and Fast Co’s Impact Council. 

Watch Namoo now on HBO Max.