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    Director Alec Helm Joins Hey Baby

    By SHOOTUpdated:No Comments5124 Views
    Alec Helm
    VENICE, Calif. --

    Director Alec Helm has joined Venice-based production house Hey Baby.

    Helm broke into the business as a freelancer and then landed at DDB New York as a jack-of-all-trades—-shooting, editing, photography, directing, even making motion graphics. After successfully filming the making-of videos for several ad campaigns, he began shooting low-budget projects which then led to directing “First World Problems” for the charity WATERisLIFE, and a short documentary for the New York City Ballet. A year and half into working at DDB New York, Helm had already directed work that garnered five Cannes Lions, and won a One Show Emerging Director Award. 

    Since then, Helm has directed spots for Under Armour, Microsoft, Facebook, Chevy, Capital One, Spotify, Air Canada, Canon, USAA, Enterprise, Glade, Coca-Cola and Land Rover.

    Helm is known for creating emotional journeys that follow characters as they evolve. His penchant for drawing the audience into the world of the character via emotion is on full display in a spot he directed for Microsoft and Skype. Helm tells the story of a young girl in Armenia suffering from blindness and, with stunning landscapes and unique architecture, captures the journey she and her family make to cure her condition. He litters the spot with twists and tricks, using points of light, focus, macro shots of webcams, and eye-shaped objects to tell the narrative of her sight being saved in a way that beautifully blends theme, character, and visuals.

    Prior to joining Hey Baby, Helm was last repped as a director by production house Tool.

    Category:News
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    Raoul Peck Resurrects A Once-Forgotten Anti-Apartheid Photographer In “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found”

    Friday, November 22, 2024

    When the photographer Ernest Cole died in 1990 at the age of 49 from pancreatic cancer at a Manhattan hospital, his death was little noted.

    Cole, one of the most important chroniclers of apartheid-era South Africa, was by then mostly forgotten and penniless. Banned by his native country after the publication of his pioneering photography book "House of Bondage," Cole had emigrated in 1966 to the United States. But his life in exile gradually disintegrated into intermittent homelessness. A six-paragraph obituary in The New York Times ran alongside a list of death notices.

    But Cole receives a vibrant and stirring resurrection in Raoul Peck's new film "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found," narrated in Cole's own words and voiced by LaKeith Stanfield. The film, which opens in theaters Friday, is laced throughout with Cole's photographs, many of them not before seen publicly.

    As he did in his Oscar-nominated James Baldwin documentary "I Am Not Your Negro," the Haitian-born Peck shares screenwriting credit with his subject. "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found" is drawn from Cole's own writings. In words and images, Peck brings the tragic story of Cole to vivid life, reopening the lens through which Cole so perceptively saw injustice and humanity.

    "Film is a political tool for me," Peck said in a recent interview over lunch in Manhattan. "My job is to go to the widest audience possible and try to give them something to help them understand where they are, what they are doing, what role they are playing. It's about my fight today. I don't care about the past."

    "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found" is a movie layered with meaning that goes beyond Cole's work. It asks questions not just about the societies Cole documented but of how he was treated as an artist,... Read More

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