Multimedia production company More Media has added director Mike Morelli to its roster. This is Morelli’s first commercial signing.
“More Media has such good taste and a keen eye for talent, immediately I felt like my style would find a home there,” said Morelli.
Morelli’s passion for filmmaking goes back to his childhood, watching "bad" 80s movies on VHS. Noting their exaggerated and cheesy effects, Morelli viewed their flaws as accessibility, and reason enough to try and make his own films. In high school, Morelli was already winning awards for spec commercials and music videos. In the years since, he’s developed a distinctive style, anchoring absurdist stories in psychedelic and surreal visuals, which touch on the camp of the ‘80s that first inspired him.
“I grew up on guys like Michel Gondry and Jonathan Glazer, where they often implemented a lot of visual effects in their work. However, no matter what they were doing, the concept was the central driving force behind the piece,” said Morelli. “Similarly, I like to root my visuals in hard concepts.”
In this vein, he’s created music videos and spots for an array of artists and major brands, including a particularly memorable short for the makeup brand NARS. In the short entitled Stick of Me, Morelli portrays a woman twisting up her new tube of lipstick to reveal–oddly–a miniature and elated version of herself, squeaking hello at the camera. This sort of clever, unexpected work, which flouts tradition and puts a smile on your face, is classic Morelli–and exactly what More Media was attracted to.
“When Mike reached out to us with his work, we were blown away with his level of skill in effects, film making, and video manipulation,” said Blaize Saunders, executive producer at More Media. “It was innovative, thoughtful, and highly creative. [CEO and EP] Stephen Buchanan and I knew we’d found someone we like to have on our team.”
In addition to his commercial work, Morelli’s made music videos for chart-topping electronic group Louis the Child and released a feature film, SHITHEAD, which has garnered him recognition, including the Audience Award at ARFF Paris and Best Screenplay at the Maverick Movie Awards in 2019.
Most recently, Morelli has pushed the envelope and explored the potential of new technologies in film, a passion he hopes to bring into his work at More Media, a company known for its innovative and eclectic repertoire. His short film The Vanishing American Dream, shot using groundbreaking stereoscopic-3D volumetric capture techniques, won Most Creative VR Film at CineQuest 2021. Shortly thereafter, Morelli released a viral short called Tweaker’s Delight, another trippy, colorful mix of virtual reality and generative art, and a culmination of his many experiments with volumetric video, 360 cameras, and AI.
“At More Media, I’m looking forward to creating some groundbreaking content,” said Morelli. “I’d like to keep pushing the boundaries of the medium of filmmaking, to continue raising the bar and exploring what new possibilities lay ahead.”
Juliette Welfling Takes On A Musical, A Crime Thriller, Comedy and Drama In “Emelia Pérez”
Editor Juliette Welfling has a track record of close-knit, heartfelt collaboration with writer-director Jacques Audiard, a four-time BAFTA Award nominee for Best Film not in the English Language--starting with The Beat That My Heart Skipped in 2006, then A Prophet in 2010, Rust and Bone in 2013, and Dheepan in 2017. He won for The Beat That My Heart Skipped and A Prophet.
Welfling cut three of those features: A Prophet, Rust and Bone, and Dheepan. And that shared filmography has since grown to most recently include Emelia Pérez, the Oscar buzz-worthy film from Netflix. Welfling herself is not stranger to Academy Award banter. In fact, she earned a Best Achievement in Film Editing Oscar nomination in 2008 for director Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
Emelia Pérez is a hybrid musical/drama/thriller which introduces us to a talented but undervalued lawyer named Rita (portrayed by Zoe Saldana) who receives a lucrative offer out of the blue from a feared drug cartel boss who’s looking to retire from his sordid business and disappear forever by becoming the woman he’s always dreamt of being (Karla SofÃa Gascón in a dual role as Manitas Del Monte/Emilia Pérez). Rita helps pull this off, orchestrating the faked death of Del Monte who leaves behind a widow (Jessi, played by Selena Gomez) and kids. While living comfortably and contently in her/their new identity, Pérez misses the children. Pérez once again enlists Rita--this time to return to family life, reuniting with the kids by pretending to be their aunt, the sister of Del Monte. Now as an aunt, Pérez winds up adopting a more altruistic bent professionally,... Read More