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.”
Directing and Editing “Conclave”; Insights From Edward Berger and Nick Emerson
It’s been a bruising election year but this time we’re referring to a ballot box struggle that’s more adult than the one you’d typically first think of in 2024. Rather, on the industry awards front, the election being cited is that of the Pope which takes front and center stage in director Edward Berger’s Conclave (Focus Features), based on the 2016 novel of the same title by Robert Harris. Adapted by screenwriter Peter Straugham, Conclave stars Ralph Fiennes as the cardinal leading the conclave that has convened to select the next Pope. While part political thriller, full of backstabbing and behind-closed-door machinations, Conclave also registers as a thoughtful adult drama dealing with themes such as a crisis of faith, weighing the greater good, and engaging in a struggle that’s as much about spirituality as the attainment of power.
Conclave is Berger’s first feature after his heralded All Quiet on the Western Front, winner of four Oscars in 2023, including for Best International Feature Film. And while Conclave would on the surface seem to be quite a departure from that World War I drama, there’s a shared bond of humanity which courses through both films.
For Berger, the heightened awareness of humanity hit home for him by virtue of where he was--in Rome, primarily at the famed Cinecittà studio--to shoot Conclave, sans any involvement from the Vatican. He recalled waking up in Rome to “soak up” the city. While having his morning espresso, Berger recollected looking out a window and seeing a priest walking about with a cigarette in his mouth, a nun having a cup of coffee, an archbishop carrying a briefcase. It dawned on Berger that these were just people going to... Read More