There’s a caring quality to director Laura Belsey’s work. It’s evident in her documentary Katrina’s Children, which shows us the disaster through the eyes of kids who experienced it.
But Belsey’s caring is also evident in film directed by others, specifically those talented students who have been impacted by her work as a teacher of the commercial directing class at the Graduate Film School of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Nat Livingston Johnson and Gregory Mitnick are a directing duo known as Peking, which recently signed with Station Film for representation. Johnson and Mitnick were students of Belsey at NYU.
Johnson said of Belsey, “She was an incredible influence and presence in our segue into the industry. She was always available and mentored us, taught us most everything we know about film. And most of her guidance was outside of the classroom. She is a loyal, helpful guide and a close friend. She introduced us to people, prepared us for what to expect in the real world, how to approach meetings with production companies, how to approach conference calls. She has offered us sage advice all along the way.”
Under the tutelage of Belsey, as part of the third year NYU Graduate Film School class, Johnson and Mitnick directed Apple iTune’s “Lost” and Slim Jim’s “Champs,” which were the two honorees in the Student Commercial category of this year’s Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) Show. (The Peking team is profiled in this Directors Issue’s feature story on up-and-coming helmers.)
Two other students of Belsey, Lapo Melzi and Harry Mavromichalis, were finalists along with Mitnick and Johnson for the AICP Show Student Commercial category honors.
Furthermore, earlier this year, Melzi was included in SHOOT‘s New Directors Showcase on the strength of his African American Planning Commission’s “Paper Child” spot.
Appropriately enough, Belsey has been one of the Directors Guild of America representatives each of the past two years making welcoming introductory remarks at SHOOT’s New Directors Showcase event at the DGA Theatre in New York. The Guild selected her based on her directorial accomplishments, her service to the DGA, and her track record of nurturing new talent.
Belsey has been teaching at NYU for about four years in a spotmaking class she developed at the request of the school after she had given a lecture one day at an NYU workshop on directing commercials.
“The chance to develop the course intrigued me,” she recalled. “To create the class from scratch, share my experiences with students, and then see them grow and go on to attain some success has been gratifying. Last week we analyzed a spot and it’s simply amazing to see how much filmmaking is involved in just thirty seconds. For filmmakers, no matter what they do afterwards, they can understand so much through this multi-faceted prism of thirty seconds. I think that the students come away with a greater understanding of themselves as filmmakers. And they gain insights into what a filmmaker always has to do–which is to sell themselves as filmmakers.”
Hybrid filmmaker Belsey considers herself a hybrid filmmaker, moving in and out of commercials with a mix of documentary and assorted short-form projects. She is still quite young, 43, for a 20-year veteran of the business. And above all, she remains open to learning–including learning from her colleagues, collaborators and students.
“Whatever you do feeds everything else,” she observed. “Doing the [Katrina] documentary transformed me as a director. I had to learn about kids, about working with kids.
“Directors like to learn, plan and control,” continued Belsey.. “But with the documentary, you have to learn to be super fluid and flexible. I shot the majority of the documentary myself because with kids it worked better. We started out with a full crew but out of necessity I became a sort of one-man band, shooting, doing sound, working on a different scale.”
Belsey’s penchant for authentic human-based storytelling also is movingly reflected in four web videos she recently directed for Voices of Meningitis out of Publicis Modem, New York, delving into the minds and hearts of parents who lost a child to meningitis, as well as children and teenagers who almost died of the disease.
Additionally among her recent endeavors is a short documentary for the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, a snippet of which was previewed at the Tony Awards ceremony. The work gives insights into stage directors and choreographers without interviewing them. Instead their contributions are discussed, identified and assessed by collaborators such as actors, scenic painters and other artisans.
Belsey remains active in commercials with anti-smoking spots as well as Zantac ad work, both for Canada. The Zantac commercial is black and white, showing a woman diving into water.
“I like finding humanity and beauty in unlikely places,” said Belsey. “The woman was middle-aged and a bit plump. Yet diving in a bathing suit, she comes across as incredibly beautiful. The spot reflects a lot about what I seek–to see the beauty of humanity.”
Belsey is embarking on a new chapter in her commercialmaking career, linking with New York-based C Entertainment for representation. The move reunites her with C’s principal, veteran executive producer Jack Cohn. The director earlier enjoyed some of her most prolific spot directing years when she was at the venerable Lovinger/Cohn, in which Cohn was a founding partner. Among her credits there was a classic Coalition for the Homeless spot which unfolded to the strains of “New York, New York.”
The director’s endeavors outside of commercials continue to be run through her Shadow Pictures, New York. Belsey is in the midst of a new documentary which she isn’t yet at liberty to discuss publicly but it will build upon lessons learned from her experience directing Katrina’s Children, and again focus on a humanity-based theme.
