4th Annual New Directors Showcase
On May 25, SHOOT unveiled its fourth annual New Directors Showcase reel. The 25 helmers–including three two-person teams–selected for the Showcase come from diverse backgrounds. However, the bond they share is great style, vision and commitment–whether it be reflected in comedy, visuals or storytelling. Helping fashion the Showcase lineup were entries from SHOOT‘s ongoing “The Best Work You May Never See” gallery, assorted submissions, and feedback from agency creatives and producers. Here’s a look at this year’s field:
Marc Colucci
Picture Park
World Curling Championship’s “Curlers”
Handel and Haydn’s “Messiah is Coming”
How did you get into directing?
I had been a P.A. and then an A.D. in Boston for a few years and then Mark Hankey (Executive Producer at Picture Park) called and asked me to direct a really low budget job. I think the whole thing cost $200. We made a sandwich board, bought a shirt for talent and paid a parking ticket. We shot on a bunch of black and white short ends that we dug out of the film closet. It’s a rough gritty spot, but still one of my favorites.
Why do you want to direct commercials?
I like the challenge of telling a story in just 30 seconds that stops people from changing the channel.
What is your most recent spot project?
I just did two 15 second spots for The World Curling Championships. We shot on a Monday for a Thursday delivery date. It was tight, but curling is already such a non sequitur of a sport that the spots couldn’t help but be funny.
Do you have plans to work in other areas?
Honestly, I’m up for anything. But what I’m really hoping to do is a commercial that has a ridiculously big budget, with fast cars and explosions.
What do you think is the best part about being a director?
I would have to say working with actors. Sometimes there’s a moment when you’re trying to put a scene into context and you find a common ground with them and everything just kinda clicks. I worked on this job once where the sound guy kept forgetting to turn down the mic while I was talking to the actor. The agency told me later that I had been giving direction in sync with what they were discussing, without us ever having to talk about it. It’s really nice when everyone is totally on the same page.
What’s the worst part?
Not being able to smoke on set.
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