Director/writer Richard Yelland is joining Happy Ending, the production company founded earlier this year by executive producer Steven Shore and director Jonathan David. Yelland comes over from Dictionary Films.
Yelland’s critically acclaimed film Floating: the Nathan Gocke Story, produced by Oscar-nominee, Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), won “Best Documentary” at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival’s American Pavilion Emerging Filmmaker Showcase. Floating was also a “Best Documentary” winner at the 2010 New York City Short Film Festival and is currently airing nationally on FUEL TV. The film chronicles the story of a man who becomes a paraplegic after a surfing accident and then perseveres through rehab to again surf.
Yelland has become known as a filmmaker who explores the extremes of action sports and human storytelling with a smart hint of comedy. Real people, powerful visuals and great performances are a trademark of his directorial work on projects for Fox Sports, Fuel TV and the Ford Motor Company, among others. Yelland received an Emmy nomination in the national public service category for “Pool,” a PSA he wrote and directed for the Life Rolls On Foundation, a nonprofit organization that serves as a grass-roots resource and advocate for young people who have sustained spinal cord injuries. “Pool” centers on Darwin Holmes, a wheelchair-bound athlete who finds himself poolside, staring–one imagines, into the water below–and contemplating his physical limitations. Shockingly, Holmes rolls his chair over the edge and into the swimming pool, which turns out to be empty. Holmes then “skates” all over the pool in his wheelchair, offering an extreme sports-like exhibition. A supered word “disabled” turns to “able” as he passes by. Yelland directed “Pool” when he was at Right Brain Media.
Yelland started his career as an agency creative in New York. His agency pedigree includes his serving as a copywriter at J. Walter Thompson and Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners (now Kirsehenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners), both in New York. His writing spanned such brands as Eastman Kodak, Coca-Cola, and Procter & Gamble.
As a spot director, he gained initial recognition in SHOOT‘s “The Best Work You May Never See” gallery for Gold Gym’s “Serious Fitness,” a comedy commercial that opens on a man who wakes up and drowsily walks from his bedroom to the hallway. Strangely the bedroom door is unhinged. He then takes a shower–but the shower stall door is missing. Next he heats up a cup of coffee in the kitchen microwave. The microwave door is gone. He’s then seated at the kitchen table eating breakfast when a newspaper flies into the picture and hits him in the head. A missing kitchen door cleared the path for the delivery boy to airmail the paper directly at the man. Finally we see the guy running a quick errand. He reaches to open the swinging door of a sidewalk mailbox–and effortlessly pulls the little door straight off its hinges. A closing super of the Gold Gym’s logo appears on screen, accompanied by the slogan, “Serious Fitness.”
Apple and Google Face UK Investigation Into Mobile Browser Dominance
Apple and Google aren't giving consumers a genuine choice of mobile web browsers, a British watchdog said Friday in a report that recommends they face an investigation under new U.K. digital rules taking effect next year.
The Competition and Markets Authority took aim at Apple, saying the iPhone maker's tactics hold back innovation by stopping rivals from giving users new features like faster webpage loading. Apple does this by restricting progressive web apps, which don't need to be downloaded from an app store and aren't subject to app store commissions, the report said.
"This technology is not able to fully take off on iOS devices," the watchdog said in a provisional report on its investigation into mobile browsers that it opened after an initial study concluded that Apple and Google effectively have a chokehold on "mobile ecosystems."
The CMA's report also found that Apple and Google manipulate the choices given to mobile phone users to make their own browsers "the clearest or easiest option."
And it said that the a revenue-sharing deal between the two U.S. Big Tech companies "significantly reduces their financial incentives" to compete in mobile browsers on Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones.
Both companies said they will "engage constructively" with the CMA.
Apple said it disagreed with the findings and said it was concerned that the recommendations would undermine user privacy and security.
Google said the openness of its Android mobile operating system "has helped to expand choice, reduce prices and democratize access to smartphones and apps" and that it's "committed to open platforms that empower consumers."
It's the latest move by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to crack down on the... Read More