Theresa Wingert
By Bill Dunlap
Harvesting The Crop of Up-And-Coming Directors --This spring’s five directors picked by SHOOT as up and comers in the commercial world arrived from a number of different directions. Two came through MTV’s “college of production knowledge,” one was an agency creative, another started in the music video arena, and the fifth came from a fine arts background.
Whatever their similarities and differences, all five are promising commercial directors who are making their mark in the field.
THERESA WINGERT Theresa Wingert, who signed with bicoastal MacGuffin Films in 2004, brings an artist’s sensibility to commercial directing.
A fine arts graduate from Western Washington University, she was a printmaker for much of her 20s. It took her some time to get into filmmaking, but she sees similarities between the two disciplines.
The artist’s approach showed on “A Promise,” a recent spot for Bob Evans, a Midwest restaurant chain, done through Chicago Creative Partnership.
“We were on a farm outside of Columbus, Ohio,” she explains. “By studying and observing the farm and the details of this place and working with this really great actor, I was able to construct something that everyone really thought had a visceral appeal. It came from being able to absorb it, a simple farm landscape. I shot a lot of stuff outside the board and they were so patient and gracious about it. I think it over-delivered on many levels and everybody was impressed. It’s great when I can be inspired and the agency and client can be inspired also.”
The journey from artist to director began with loneliness. “I was in a studio by myself,” she says. “From there I went into commercial photography. I had big crews and big shoots in all crazy parts of the world. I mostly did retail stuff and catalog work. I started bringing cinematographers onto my shoots and became self-taught as far as filmmaking. I think it’s the thing that challenges my mind creatively the most.”
Before signing with MacGuffin, Wingert ran her own production company, Mineral, from her hometown of Seattle. “It was outside the agency and spot world,” she says. “I would pitch my own ideas. I was like a creative director and a director, doing things that were more like two-minute films that were branding pieces.”
At MacGuffin Wingert has compiled a reel of big, cinematic spots for clients such as Pfizer, Ford and Chrysler, and last year she completed Stray, a short film that has made the festival circuit.
Wingert acknowledges that the film is the opening gambit for a movie. “I’m a commercialmaker,” she says, “but I have aspirations to make a feature film as well. Stray is a nice example of where my work is headed. I’d love to do a subtle character piece that is essentially a love story. I’ve got some different pieces of material I’m working on.”
Her artistic style shows on spots like “Crossfire” for Chrysler and BBDO Detroit. “The creatives had a big vision for it and I think I brought a different approach. I love the spot because I think it has this beautiful texture and some beauty to it. I try to challenge myself, so I want to go after that kind of work, car work and stuff that is trickier to get,” she says.
“I’m most interested in commercials where there is a sensory experience involved. That can involve creative concepts where picture, sound and concept all completely interlock into one tight thing. That’s what I’m always striving to do. I would like to do more dialogue-driven and character-driven spots because when you work with really great actors, it brings another level to the piece. My work will always be beautiful and poetic because that’s what I’m really into. When you add a great actor to it, it makes it really supercharged.”
Review: Writer-Director Andrea Arnold’s “Bird”
"Is it too real for ya?" blares in the background of Andrea Arnold's latest film, "Bird," a 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) rides with her shirtless, tattoo-covered dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan), on his electric scooter past scenes of poverty in working-class Kent.
The song's question — courtesy of the Irish post-punk band Fontains D.C. — is an acute one for "Bird." Arnold's films ( "American Honey," "Fish Tank") are rigorous in their gritty naturalism. Her fiction films — this is her first in eight years — tend toward bleak, hand-held verité in rough-and-tumble real-world locations. Her last film, "Cow," documented a mother cow separated from her calf on a dairy farm.
Arnold specializes in capturing souls, human and otherwise, in soulless environments. A dream of something more is tantalizing just out of reach. In "American Honey," peace comes to Star (Sasha Lane) only when she submerges underwater.
In "Bird," though, this sense of otherworldly possibility is made flesh, or at least feathery. After a confusing night, Bailey awakens in a field where she encounters a strange figure in a skirt ( Franz Rogowski ) who arrives, like Mary Poppins, with a gust a wind. His name, he says, is Bird. He has a soft sweetness that doesn't otherwise exist in Bailey's hardscrabble and chaotic life.
She's skeptical of him at first, but he keeps lurking about, hovering gull-like on rooftops. He cranes his neck now and again like he's watching out for Bailey. And he does watch out for her, helping Bailey through a hard coming of age: the abusive boyfriend (James Nelson-Joyce) of her mother (Jasmine Jobson); her half brother (Jason Buda) slipping into vigilante violence; her father marrying a new girlfriend.
The introduction of surrealism has... Read More