Director Shaun Conrad has signed with Santa Monica-based Snug Films, the year-old shop founded by director Michael Grasso and under the day-to-day aegis of executive producer Fran Wall.
Best known for his fashion/design work, Conrad had most recently been at Tate USA, Santa Monica. Prior to that, he was with Backyard, Venice, Calif.
Conrad gravitated toward Snug based on his belief that the shop was well positioned to help him garner work in two prime areas–one being fashion/design, the other narrative storytelling which is reflected in his new documentary, Purvis of Overtown. He cited the company’s sales force and the fact that the shop has a small, manageable roster, which should translate into his getting the personal attention needed to generate the proper work opportunities.
The Snug directorial lineup consists of Grasso, Conrad and the recently signed Andreas Grassl, an established European director who is making his first formal foray stateside.
Shot with friend David Raccuglia, the aforementioned Purvis of Overton chronicles the life and observations of Purvis Young, a self-taught painter and icon of African-American culture and history. “Yes, I want to do more narrative storytelling along with the fashion/design work,” related Conrad. “I’m drawn to two very different but highly focused areas of spotmaking.”
Conrad grew up in Minnesota, then moved to Chicago to attend the University of Illinois. He soon met up with Backyard co-founder Roy Skillicorn, who got him some local Chicago market spot jobs for hair salon Vidal Sassoon. With enough commercials under his belt, Conrad soon joined Backyard’s directorial roster. Conrad has only high praise for the production company, now headquartered in Venice. “I learned a lot about directing, just being at the same company as [directors] Rob Pritts and Kevin Smith was a positive experience for me” related Conrad.
Three years later, in 2002, Conrad left Backyard and headed for the West Coast, where he linked up with Tate USA. He worked consistently in the fashion/design arena but then made a conscious decision–and adopted a strategy–to diversify.
“I intentionally took myself out of the loop with Purvis Of Overton,” he explained. What Conrad found during the documentary was a love of narrative storytelling. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime project, so I disappeared from the commercial scene for awhile.”
He returned to commercials last year. Conrad’s spot credits over the years include work for such clients as Kraft, Burger King, Fruit Gushers, Pillsbury, Mervyn’s, Earthlink, K-Swiss and Reebok.
Snug Films is represented on the East Coast by Arthur Portnoy, in the Midwest by Maureen Butler, and on the West Coast by Rachel Finn and Mary Saxon of Finn/Saxon Represents. Snug is repped in Canada by Maxx Film and in Germany by Wunderfilm.
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