Filmmakers active in commercials scored impressively at the recently concluded Sundance Film Festival in Park City, perhaps most notably director Ondi Timoner, who helms spots via bicoastal Nonfiction Unlimited, and animation directors Alan Smith and Adam Foulkes (a.k.a. Smith & Foulkes) of London studio Nexus.
The latter saw their short This Way Up screen at Sundance, and shortly thereafter the film garnered an Academy Award nomination for best animated short.
Written by Foulkes, Smith, and Christopher O’Reilly, the humorous eight-minute film follows two dour undertakers as they battle a series of misadventures while trying to deliver a coffin to the graveyard.
“At Nexus we’ve always been committed to short film animation, so it’s fantastic to be honored with the nomination in this category,” said O’Reilly who 10 years ago co-founded Nexus with Charlotte Bavasso, a producer of This Way Up.
“But more than just being singled out by the Academy,” continued O’Reilly, “the Oscar nomination is important to us because it’s a stepping stone for us to develop feature length animation.”
Smith and Foulkes have directed short films, music videos, commercials and title sequences at Nexus. Their work includes Super Bowl commercials for Coca Cola (including this year’s “Avatar” for Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, Ore.), spots for VW, Sony, Motorola and Honda (such as the lauded “Grrr” for Wieden+Kennedy, London), the title sequence for Thunderbirds, and a film-within-a-film for Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events.”
Grand winner
Meanwhile director Timoner again earned distinction at Sundance as her We Live in Public won the festival’s Grand Jury Prize in the U.S. Documentary Competition.
Timoner directed and was the screenwriter for We Live In Public. The documentary tells the story of the Internet’s revolutionary impact on human interaction as reflected through the eyes of maverick web pioneer Josh Harris who invested part of the fortune he made on a shocking art project in New York in which people became part of a controlled community where their lives were chronicled on the Internet. Harris too became a subject of that art project as web viewers saw him in his everyday life, including one day when he was in the bathroom and received a phone call informing him that his dot-com investments had bottomed out and he had lost his entire fortune.
The documentary captures Harris as both a heroic visionary and a tragic character of sorts, who way back in the 1980s saw the web as satiating–and at the same time exploiting–people’s needs for fame.
As alluded to earlier, Timoner has a track record at Sundance. In 2004 her first major feature documentary, DIG!, debuted at the festival and won the Grand Jury Prize. The film represented some seven years of her life filming two bands, providing insights into the collision of art and commerce.
A year later Timoner had her short film Recycle also make the Sundance cut. The six-minute documentary introduced us to a homeless man who by recycling old plants created a beautiful makeshift garden in Los Angeles’ historic Echo Park neighborhood.
On the spotmaking front, Timoner has directed work for such clients as McDonald’s, Ford, the U.S. Army and State Farm. The Army fare included short web films that Timoner directed, portraying young recruits and how military training and experience impacted their lives. As for the State Farm campaign out of DDB Chicago, Timoner helmed two national spots which had her following the grass-roots efforts of State Farm agents to help and comfort victims of Hurricane Katrina. One such story was of a State Farm employee who organized five trips from Oregon to Mississippi, each with U-Haul shipments of supplies to the needy.
Jonas Odell
Smith & Foulkes’ This Way Up wasn’t the only short to go a long way at Sundance. Lies, the short directed by Jonas Odell, received Sundance honors as the festival’s Best International Short Film.
The film was produced by FilmTecknarna in Stockholm and is Odell’s second major success in the past three years. His previous short film Never Like the First Time! was a big winner on the festival circuit after its international release.
The new short, Lies, deals with the subject of lies, big and small. In three different episodes we follow the unraveling of three major lies and their consequences. This follows in the documentary style that Odell used for the previous film as well.
Jonas Odell is co-owner of FilmTecknarna and works as a director, producing commercials, music videos and short films for the international market. He is well known for commercials branding such clients as BMW, Absolut, Pier 1 and Target. He has also directed music videos for such artists as U2, Erasure, Franz Ferdinand, Goldfrapp and many more.
FilmTecknarna is repped in the U.S. by Nancy Jacobs.
Other developments
Also at the Sundance Fest, boutique distributor Arthouse Films bought worldwide rights to the documentary Art & Copy, which explores the impact of advertising and creativity on modern culture. Art & Copy was directed by Doug Pray whose commercialmaking home is Oil Factory, Los Angeles.
Seattle-based director David Russo–who helms spots via ka-chew! Hollywood–premiered his cult comedy/wild FX trip feature The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle at Sundance.
Russo is known for his experimental films, three of which previously played Sundance.
The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle–which Russo also scripted–centers on a night janitor and crew who while cleaning the office of a firm that test markets experimental products discover a batch of cookies that heat up in your mouth for a fresh-baked flavor. The guys become addicted to the cookies and begin to experience strange side effects.
On opening night in Sundance, the film was sold in two territories, Australia and New Zealand.
As previously chronicled in SHOOT (1/9), among the other filmmakers involved in spots whose work made this year’s Sundance lineup were:
• Dominic Murphy of bicoastal/international Partizan whose film White Lightnin’ was selected as a Sundance Park City at Midnight presentation. White Lightnin’ centers on a man who uses dancing to deal with formidable personal demons, including drug addiction and mental instability.
• Director Marc Webb (recently featured in SHOOT‘s Chat Room, 1/30) made his feature debut with 500 Days of Summer. He is repped by DNA, Hollywood, for spots and music videos.
• Feature filmmaker Antoine Fuqua, who directs spots via bicoastal Anonymous Content, had his Brooklyn’s Finest screened as part of the Sundance Premieres showcase. Delving into the gritty world of cops and crooks, the film stars Richard Gere, Don Cheadle and Ethan Hawke.
• Documentary filmmaker Jessica Yu, whose spotmaking roost is Nonfiction Unlimited, premiered her short film The Kinda Sutra as part of Sundance’s U.S. documentary shorts program.
• Two other directors with commercialmaking chops had their shorts make it to Sundance via the Exquisite Corpse initiative (SHOOT, 10/5/07) launched by bicoastal production house Little Minx, a division of RSA. The series of web shorts were designed to gain exposure for up-and-coming directors in the Little Minx fold. Making it to the ’09 Sundance Festival in the U.S. dramatic shorts category are: Rope A Dope directed by Laurent Briet (who has since left Little Minx for Mr. Boomboom, a sister shop to bicoastal/international Believe Media); and She Walked Calmly Disappearing Into The Darkness, directed by Malik Hassan Sayeed.
• Animation helmer Bill Plympton, who’s represented for commercials by Acme Filmworks, Hollywood, debuted his short film Hot Dog in which a plucky canine hero joins the fire department to save the world from house fires.
• Director PES, who is repped by Anonymous Content, had his motion animation short Western Spaghetti make the grade at Sundance in the U.S. animated shorts category.
• Director Walter Robot for Joel Stein’s Completely Unfabricated Adventures in which journalist Stein takes us on an animated adventure through the waste management plant of Orange County. The film gained inclusion in Sundance’s U.S. animated shorts category. Robot directs commercials via DUCK Studios, Los Angeles, and music videos through Crossroads, which has shops on both coasts, in Chicago and London.
• And director William Campbell of Superfad, bicoastal and Seattle, scored for the multimedia short The Nature Between Us, which meshes animation characters with intentionally synthetic-feeling live action. Campbell is a member of the production collective Team G (which scored a Sundance short last year with The Execution of Solomon Harris, directed by Ed Yonaitis and Wyatt Garfield). A Team G/Superfad coproduction, The Nature Between Us, earned recognition in the ’09 Sundance U.S. dramatic shorts category.
Additionally, assorted artisans active in commercials had a hand in Sundance fare this year, a case in point being bicoastal Company 3, which provides DI color grading and other post services for films. This year, for example, Company 3’s Stefan Sonnenfeld handled the DI grade for the aforementioned Brooklyn’s Finest while colorist David Hussy made the grade for 500 Days of Summer. And Company 3 colorist Shane Harris graded two other Sundance films, director Jonas Pate’s Shrink, and helmer Jonathan Liebesman’s The Killing Room.
