Editor Deirdre Bell has come aboard the roster of Nomad, New York.
Bell began her career in Chicago where she cut ads for blue-chip clients including Allstate, McDonald’s and United Airlines. She then moved back East to begin her career in NYC which included eight successful years at Red Car NY, where she worked with Nomad’s EP, Jennifer Lederman, and edited many campaigns for clients including K-Mart, Kohls, Advil, and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, exhibiting a talent for shaping a narrative and solving a tight, well-paced or music-driven spot.
Bell said, “I really love cutting documentary spots because so much of the shaping of the story happens in the edit suite. And I will never cease to be amazed by the way real people speak.”
About working at Nomad, she added, “I’m thrilled to be at a place where the craft of editing is so highly prized. Everyone is so welcoming and the opportunity to work with Jennifer Lederman again is almost too good to be true.”
Nomad editor and partner Amanda Moreau said of Bell, “She is a perfect fit for Nomad. I’ve been a fan of her work for a long time. She has a wonderful ability to craft compelling visual stories that pull viewers in.”
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More