Independent agency Mojo Supermarket has hired Mel Senecal as its director of integrated production, a new position at the NY shop. Senecal is joining Mojo following a 10-year tenure at McCann where she served as VP/executive producer leading all productions at m:united/McCann and overseeing productions for global markets.
At McCann, Senecal led production for a long list of clients, including Verizon, L’Oréal, Microsoft, and Coca-Cola. Her produced work features high-profile talent like Blake Lively, Freida Pinto, Lea Michele, Maurice Harris, Jorge Gutierrez, Melissa Arnot, Sandra Equihua, and Zoe Saldana.
“Work that shakes up culture is often almost impossible to produce because usually there’s no ‘best practice’ for it,” explained Mo Said, founder and creative chief at Mojo Supermarket. “So we didn’t need a producer, we needed a creative with a production title to sit in the creative department. I think we’ve successfully fooled everyone.”
While at McCann, Senecal founded McCann Q, the company’s LGBTQIA resource group. The group enabled the agency to spearhead excellent work like Mastercard’s “True Name” and “Acceptance Street,” as well as Verizon’s “Love Calls Back.” Entertainment Weekly called her most recent project with Microsoft, “Find Your Joy,” as one of the top holiday ads in 2020.
“I believe the advertising and marketing industry can affect societal change and make powerful social statements,” explained Mel Senecal. “I just want to shake sh*t up and I know Mojo is the place to do it.”
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