Creative editorial and postproduction company Final Cut has named Rebecca Mitchell as head of production at its office in L.A. Mitchell will bring more than a decade’s experience as a sr. producer and post supervisor to her new role at Final Cut, having worked in a wide variety of content and formats with clients as diverse as Apple, Salesforce, the NFL, eBay, Fitbit, and Stitch Fix.
Mitchell honed her skills as a post-producer at Nice Shoes in New York. There she spent nearly 10 years working her way up from cruise director (a client-liaison role) to sr. producer. Throughout her tenure at Nice Shoes, Mitchell grew with the company as it evolved from a color and finishing house to a full-service studio, mastering each discipline along the way and finally producing projects and connecting workflows from start to finish.
Since her relocation from New York to L.A. in 2019, Rebecca has managed postproduction for A+E Networks and freelanced at Company 3, The Den Editorial, Cabin Editing, Harbor Picture Company, Nice Shoes, Art Class, and Final Cut in roles as focused as color correction services or as comprehensive as overseeing projects from concept to completion.
“In a highly collaborative profession where late nights and demanding projects are standard, it’s paramount to work with people you genuinely harmonize with,” said Mitchell. “I was fortunate to freelance at Final Cut before coming on board full-time. I’m extremely impressed by the culture here, the high level of cooperation among producers, and the caliber of work Final Cut produces.”
“The driving forces behind Final Cut are collaboration and craft,” said Final Cut’s L.A. executive producer, Suzy Ramirez. “Rebecca has demonstrated her facility and deep respect for both of those core tenets through her work with Final Cut and beyond. She’s a talented mind and a creative spirit.”
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