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:
Shyam Madiraju
V3 at Anonymous Content
L.A. Film Festival’s “Checkout”
L.A. Film Festival’s “Nocturnal”
How did you get into directing?My whole career has been a series of fortunate accidents. I always wanted to be an architect, but when I missed the deadline for the college admission, they recommended I go to the neighboring art school instead. While studying graphic design there I took photography classes and became profoundly influenced by the medium. Photography soon led me to film and I started dabbling in documentaries while at school. But fate had other plans, I graduated and soon found myself traveling all over the globe working as an art director for some of the most reputed ad agencies in the world. In 2001, 14 years, several advertising jobs and two kids later I finally decided it was time to get back to what I had fallen in love with while at the Art School.
Why do you want to direct commercials?
One of the best things about being an art director and a creative director was getting the chance to watch some of the most prolific commercial directors at work. Their sense of achievement was inspiring and infectious. So the challenge of becoming as good a director or perhaps even better, is not merely an ambition but maybe even an obsession. Besides, the skill, discipline and vision required to tell a good story within 30 seconds is about as good a learning experience as there can be for any new director.
What are your most recent spot projects?
Most recently I finished a viral film project for Arnold Boston. An online campaign, that launched the 120 features of the new VW Passat. Due to its popularity, one of the films was turned into a national TV spot. Presently, I’m working on a package of commercials for the Fox Sports Channel set to release in July. A spot for Big Dog motorcycles for Team One is also on the calendar.
Do you have plans to work in other areas — e.g. shorts, films, features or TV?
2001 changed the lives of many people, mine included. During the long months of unemployment and solitude I found myself writing. The result, BROKEN, the labor of love is my debut feature. Inspired by true events, it is the story of two sisters who come from India to work off their family debt, only to discover that they have been sold as sex slaves. The film is in pre-production with 50%t of the budget raised. The film has attracted some very talented people from the Independent Film community. Rosemary Marks (Thirteen, Going Shopping) is producing the film. Academy Award-winning Doug Mankoff (Tsotsi, Thirteen Conversations About One Thing, Water, The City) is the executive advisor for the film. The film is slated to shoot in India and the USA at the end of 2006.
What do you think is the best part about being a director?
The trust and expectation everyone places in your vision and talent.
What’s the worst part?
The trust and expectation everyone places in your vision and talent. The fear of failure is terrifying.
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