The husband-and-wife directing team of Nick Brooks and Laura Kelly, a.k.a. Honey, has expanded its involvement with Los Angeles-based Squeak Pictures to now also encompass commercials and other disciplines such as short films and Internet projects. Squeak and Honey still maintain their longstanding relationship for music videos, which most recently has included Rage Against The Machine’s "Guerilla Radio."
Honey had formerly been repped for spots by Aegis, a bicoastal venture launched earlier this year (SHOOT, 2/18, p. 7) by Johnson/Burnett, which is best known for providing production services and backroom/ administrative support to the spot industry. Johnson/Burnett is bicoastal, with an office recently opened in Toronto (SHOOT, 6/2, p. 8). Through Aegis, Honey directed the U.S. Postal Service spot "You Send Me," out of Draft Worldwide, Chicago.
Both Brooks and Kelly come from visual effects backgrounds. In fact, for his design work in the "Painted World" sequences of the film What Dreams May Come, Brooks won a visual effects Academy Award last year. He first established himself as a senior artist with London-based CFC, director Terry Gilliam’s digital effects facility, creating assorted images as well as some of the technology that made them possible. Brooks went on to work as an effects artist with several noted directors, including Ridley Scott on the feature 1492. In the mid-1990s, Brooks served as digital effects supervisor with now defunct Mass.Illusion, the predecessor to what eventually became Manex’s Northern California visual effects/production complex.
Kelly studied at New York University’s film school before joining a team of filmmakers led by effects veteran Douglas Trumbull, in ’90. During this time, she apprenticed as a camerawoman with Dave Stewart, the visual effects DP for 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, among other movies. As a freelance effects artist, Kelly worked on varied projects spanning such areas as theme entertainment (e.g.—Universal Studios’ Back to the Future ride in Los Angeles, multimedia attractions at the Luxor Hotel, Las Vegas) and features (Judge Dredd, Turbulence, Air Force One, Starship Troopers). Many of her freelance endeavors were through Mass.Illusion and now defunct Boss Film. Kelly also served as a third unit DP, doing beauty photography, for the aforementioned What Dreams May Come.
Honey and Squeak have teamed on commercials in the past, but not with Brooks and Kelly as helmers. Instead Honey has done visual effects design for a VoiceStream Cellular campaign starring Jamie Lee Curtis and directed by Squeak’s Hermann Lederle for Publicis, Seattle.
Collaborations between Squeak and Honey have also gone beyond videos and spots. Honey shot a documentary this past April and May in Vietnam. Titled Riencarnation and produced under the Squeak banner, the 90-minute film, which Brooks described as "a fantasy documentary," tells the stories of several artists who live in Hanoi. Squeak president/executive producer Pam Tarr is currently seeking distribution for the documentary.
Brooks said that the team at Squeak—including Tarr and the company’s reps—is what prompted him and Kelly to decide to bring their spot work to the company. "Our experience with Squeak on the music video side was positive and the thought of us working there on commercials and other projects appealed to us greatly," related Brooks.
Squeak’s directorial roster includes Honey, Andy Dick, Chris Robinson and Leta Warner for commercials and music videos. The company additionally handles spot representation for Lederle, Gil Bauwens and Bobby Sheehan. Squeak’s lineup of video directors includes Ulf Buddensieck, Lawrence Carroll, Dani Jacobs, Roger Pistole and Jeremy Rall.
At press time, Squeak was about to finalize its West Coast spot representation. The company is repped on the East Coast by Help!, the New York- and Minneapolis-based firm in which Mary Knox and Alyson Daniels are partnered. Chris Breneman handles the Midwest via Chicago-based Stacey & Annie & Chris.
