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    Director Mike Nelesen Joins EMA For National Representation

    By SHOOTUpdated:No Comments2826 Views
    Mike Nelesen
    LOS ANGELES --

    Production company Envision Media Arts (EMA) has signed director Mike Nelesen to its commercial division. Among his credits is H&R Block’s “Procrastination” out of Fallon Minneapolis, which was named to TruTV’s “Top 10 Funniest Commercials of the Year” for 2013. The H&R job was produced by Drive-Thru, Minneapolis, which continues to handle Nelesen for select house accounts in Minneapolis. EMA otherwise reps him nationally.

    Nelesen’s work spans such brands as McDonald’s, TiVo, Baskin Robbins, MNsure, ConocoPhillips, Marshfield Clinics and Nickelodeon Universe. He also directed, shot and edited two “user-generated” clips for Nike that were posted anonymously to YouTube. Besides being picked up by tens of thousands of blogs worldwide, each clip can claim millions of views. One of the clips, “Randy’s Donuts,” was viewed more than a half million times in a single day. “Cheerleader Toss,” another of Nelesen’s early viral projects, was viewed over 11 million times. The clip still retains thousands of web postings today.

    Nelesen teamed with Best Buy, Redline Entertainment and The Rolling Stones to develop and produce broadcast and internet marketing material for The Rolling Stones’ four-DVD box set, “Four Flicks,” which was distributed exclusively by Best Buy and achieved five-times platinum sales in less than a month. Nelesen also directed broadcast campaigns featuring Sheryl Crow, Tony Hawk, Moby, and Elton John. For AMC Theatres, Nelesen co-conceived and directed four of the five successful “Silence is Golden” mock film trailers, which played for cinema audiences internationally.

    For Nelesen, the opportunity to join EMA came from his long-term relationship with Andrew Halpern, exec producer/president of commercial production at EMA. “Andrew and I have always had a great time working together,” said Nelesen. “And he and Lee (Nelson, EMA’s president/CEO) as a team are a great creative force. I have watched them develop the EMA commercial division over the last year, and am excited to have an opportunity to join them.”

    Nelesen has known Halpern dating back to when they were together at Crossroads. Together they turned out work for Ford, ConocoPhillips and Honda.

    Category:News
    Tags:Envision Media ArtsMike Nelesen



    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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