Danny Glover, a noted actor who made his directorial debut in 2002 with the Daytime Emmy-nominated children’s special Just A Dream, is back in the helmer’s chair with a short entitled Second Line. Glover also stars in the short, portraying a wealthy and frustrated businessman who is forced to walk to work after his car will not start. The man is too busy and self-consumed to notice the people and places he passes along the streets of San Francisco.
Several of those he has either ignored or failed to help join him in his walk to work. As he reaches the office building where he works, Glover realizes what he has missed during his commute. His facial expression changes and he suddenly becomes aware of his surroundings as he helps a homeless man in front of the building. The film ends as the businessman enters his office building, turns around and notices another “lost soul” speeding by–also to be accompanied by those she has failed to notice.
Second Line was written by Nicole Middleton and produced by Moving Parts, Inc. The film’s DP, Michael Chin, was nominated for an Emmy® in Outstanding Cinematography for The American Experience, a series of documentaries on American history. Editor of Second Line was Steve Edwards. The film’s creators and artists were inspired by the collective spirit of street parades or “second lines,” a longstanding cultural tradition in New Orleans that celebrates family and community.
Second Line is the latest entry in The Responsibility Project, which was created by Liberty Mutual and ad agency Hill Holliday, Boston. The Responsibility Project uses entertainment content to create a forum for people to discuss personal acts of responsibility. Through short films, online content and television programming, The Responsibility Project is a catalyst for examining the decisions that confront people trying to “do the right thing.” Individuals can participate in online conversations about personal responsibility and also review film shorts, including Second Line, on the project’s online community found here.
The initiative sprung from a Liberty Mutual television commercial which debuted on air in 2006. Directed by Laurence Dunmore of RSA Films and conceived by a Hill Holliday creative team, the spot–titled “What Goes Around/Home”–showed people performing good deeds and how one gesture of kindness begets another and another before completing a circle which brings us back to the original good deed.
The centerpiece of a campaign built on the mantra, “Responsibility. What’s your policy?, the commercial struck a responsive chord with the public, so much so that Liberty Mutual and Hill Holliday knew they had something special. So they built on that pay-it-forward spirit by launching The Responsibility Project.
See the short Second Line below:
Craig Henighan Sounds Off On “Deadpool & Wolverine”
Hollywood lore has it that character actor Edmund Gwenn--while on his deathbed--quipped, “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.”
The second part of that darkly witty utterance remains all too true today as Craig Henighan--a Best Achievement in Sound Mixing Oscar nominee in 2019 for Roma--can attest in that he had to grapple with the sonic of being comic for this year’s box office hit, Deadpool & Wolverine (20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios).
The degree of inherent difficulty was ramped up even further because Deadpool & Wolverine had to seamlessly bring together high action-adventure exploits with moments and dialogue that tickled the funny bone. There’s a mesh of humorous banter--a staple of the franchise--along with major spectacle replete with explosions, fights, an impactful score and off-the-wall musical numbers.
Henighan explained that among the prime challenges for him from a sound perspective was having to make sure every joke landed within the construct of a superhero film. The tendency for a tentpole movie of this variety, he noted, is to gravitate towards big, loud audio spanning music, dialogue and sound effects. But the unique comedic element of Deadpool & Wolverine necessitated that re-recording mixer and supervising sound editor Henighan strike a delicate balance. “You need to get out of the way for the comedy,” he related. The jokes in a superhero film become “a real dance” as Henighan had to establish a rhythm that did justice to both the comedy and the action as the narrative moves back and forth between them--and sometimes the funny and the high energy, high decibel superhero dynamic unfold simultaneously in a scene or sequence. The “sonic fabric” has to... Read More