4th Annual New Directors Showcase
On May 25, SHOOT unveiled its fourth annual New Directors Showcase reel. The 25 helmers–including three two-person teams–selected for the Showcase come from diverse backgrounds. However, the bond they share is great style, vision and commitment–whether it be reflected in comedy, visuals or storytelling. Helping fashion the Showcase lineup were entries from SHOOT‘s ongoing “The Best Work You May Never See” gallery, assorted submissions, and feedback from agency creatives and producers. Here’s a look at this year’s field:
Peter Martin (Peter Livolsi & Martin Dix)
No company affiliation
Herringbone’s “Tea Party”
Web.com’s “iPsycho”
How did you get into directing?
Peter recently graduated from the American Film Institute (AFI) and Martin came from an advertising background. We met because we happened to be sitting next to each other at a party. Our inability to mingle and general social awkwardness forced us to talk to each other and we found we were both passionate about the same kinds of movies and directors. Soon after that Peter Martin was born.
Why do you want to direct commercials?
Shooting makes us happy.
What is your most recent spot project?
Our most recent TV job were a pair of spots for Web.com. “eBeg” featured a homeless man who put his panhandling business online and “iPscyho” was about a psycho ex-girlfriend who used Web.com to share her revenge tactics. “iPsycho” was just accepted into this year’s One Show. We also just completed a series of virals for The World’s Shortest Short Film Festival, a showcase for two AFI thesis films.
Do you have plans to work in other areas–e.g., shorts, films,
features or TV? Have you ever done any of that in the past?
We’d love to make features down the road, but right now commercials give us the chance to make different little movies every time we go out. Whether it’s a traditional :30 or something long-form for the Web, we enjoy telling all sorts of stories. Peter’s graduate thesis short, Duncan Removed, was just nominated for a Student Academy Award.
What do you think is the best part about being a director?
Being on set and working on the day is a lot of fun, but we get a bigger kick out of prepping jobs down to the smallest detail because in the end that’s what makes the project really work. On set, we enjoy our collaboration with actors and helping them fine tune a performance, but we also enjoy working in the cutting room to help shape that performance into something new and unexpected.
What’s the worst part?
Last minute changes like losing a location or bad weather can
throw a wrench in things, but we’ve found that those near-disasters force you to roll with it and find a creative solution that is often better than your original intent.
Review: Writer-Director Andrea Arnold’s “Bird”
"Is it too real for ya?" blares in the background of Andrea Arnold's latest film, "Bird," a 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) rides with her shirtless, tattoo-covered dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan), on his electric scooter past scenes of poverty in working-class Kent.
The song's question — courtesy of the Irish post-punk band Fontains D.C. — is an acute one for "Bird." Arnold's films ( "American Honey," "Fish Tank") are rigorous in their gritty naturalism. Her fiction films — this is her first in eight years — tend toward bleak, hand-held verité in rough-and-tumble real-world locations. Her last film, "Cow," documented a mother cow separated from her calf on a dairy farm.
Arnold specializes in capturing souls, human and otherwise, in soulless environments. A dream of something more is tantalizing just out of reach. In "American Honey," peace comes to Star (Sasha Lane) only when she submerges underwater.
In "Bird," though, this sense of otherworldly possibility is made flesh, or at least feathery. After a confusing night, Bailey awakens in a field where she encounters a strange figure in a skirt ( Franz Rogowski ) who arrives, like Mary Poppins, with a gust a wind. His name, he says, is Bird. He has a soft sweetness that doesn't otherwise exist in Bailey's hardscrabble and chaotic life.
She's skeptical of him at first, but he keeps lurking about, hovering gull-like on rooftops. He cranes his neck now and again like he's watching out for Bailey. And he does watch out for her, helping Bailey through a hard coming of age: the abusive boyfriend (James Nelson-Joyce) of her mother (Jasmine Jobson); her half brother (Jason Buda) slipping into vigilante violence; her father marrying a new girlfriend.
The introduction of surrealism has... Read More