Editor Michael Coletta has joined Red Car‘s national roster. He will tap into the company’s reach across the country, particularly in the New York and Chicago markets where he is quite active. Coletta comes over to Red Car from Nomad Editing Company, which he joined last year.
Known for work with a character-driven comedic flair, Coletta said that his passion is shaping narrative. He has cut for such clients as Budweiser, Volkswagen, MasterCard, Verizon Wireless and Motorola.
Coletta studied film and photography at Columbia College, Chicago. He began his cutting career as an assistant editor at Szabo-Tohtz Editing, which became Skyview Film & Video where he was promoted to full-fledged editor. After a decade there, he moved to The Lookinglass Company, which eventually merged with and became part of The Whitehouse.
At Lookinglass, Coletta edited Budweiser’s “Out of Towner,” “Jerry” and “Phone Chain,” spots directed by Allen Coulter of Hungry Man for DDB Chicago which collectively earned a 2002 AICP Show honor in the Advertising Excellence/Campaign category. (Coulter is now with Station Film.)
“Out of Towner” was also nominated for a primetime commercial Emmy in ’02. In the ad, the Jersey Guys of “how ya doin'” fame meet their match in the person of a country bumpkin who walks into their bar hangout. The stranger is from out of town and repeatedly answers the “how ya doin'” query with his mundane just-flew-into-the-airport, met-some-nice-people, visiting-relatives recap of his vacation experience.
Coletta later relocated from Chicago to New York and joined Bug Editorial where he worked for three years before hooking up with 89 Editorial in ’04. At 89 Editorial, he worked on numerous high profile spots and campaigns, including the True Blood commercial promo series, and Purity Organics’ viral spot “Tirade.”
The latter, directed by Geordie Stephens of Tool of North America for McCann Erickson, New York, was a SHOOT Top Spot of the Week (8/7/09).
The commercial opens on a businessman who has lost his cool on the phone and expresses his anger for what’s being done to him by cursing his displeasure to a colleague. We only hear the business guy’s end of the conversation–or at least a portion of it as each swear word is bleeped out. At some points we hear one prolonged bleeping tone. The man’s anger escalates until he takes a swig from a bottle of Purity Organic Juice. The drink proves to be an instant calming elixir as the guy takes a deep breath and asks, “Anyway, how are the kids doing?” He goes on to say that he’s doing fine, that he is still singing in the church group and life is good.
His transformation reaffirms Purity’s slogan that its juices help people “become more pure.”
As for recent work, Coletta edited via Nomad a Little Debbie campaign directed by Steve Chase of Curious Pictures for agency Luckie & Company. Those spots are slated to air in early September.
Review: Director Alex Parkinson’s “Last Breath” Starring Woody Harrelson and Simu Liu
A routine deep sea diving mission in the North Sea goes terribly wrong when a young diver is stranded some 300 feet below the surface in the new film "Last Breath." His umbilical cable has severed. The support vessel above is aimlessly drifting away from the site through violent, stormy waters. And the diver has only ten minutes of oxygen in his backup tank.
As if that wasn't enough, it's also a true story.
If merely reading this is giving you heart palpitations already, you can only imagine the white-knuckle experience of watching this all play out on the big screen. It's 40ish minutes of pure suspense and anxiety as the story shuffles between the man at the bottom of the ocean, Chris Lemons (Finn Cole), his fellow saturation divers (Woody Harrelson as Duncan and Simu Liu as Dave) in the diving bell below the waters who are unable to help and the crew in the support vessel above (including Cliff Cutris and Mark Bonnar) scrambling to get their systems back online and operational as the clock rapidly runs out. Ten minutes has never felt so short – and then it just gets worse as the clock starts counting up, showing Chris's time without oxygen.
At one point, Liu's character Dave, a no-nonsense, all-business diver says matter-of-factly at that it's a body recovery, not a rescue. Deep sea saturation diving is a dangerous business, described at the start of the film as the most dangerous job on earth. Chris tells his fiancé, in a short introduction, that it's no more dangerous than going to space. She replies that it's funny that he thinks that is comforting.
The real incident happened in September 2012 – Dave, Duncan and Chris were just one team of divers sent to the ocean floor off the coast of Aberdeen, Scotland, to repair oil... Read More