Production designer Jeremy Reed topped the commercials category at The Art Directors Guild’s 2005 Production Design Awards ceremony held on Feb. 12 in Beverly Hills. Reed garnered the honor on the strength of Bud Light’s “Headless Horseman,” directed by Douglas Avery, who at the time was with bicoastal Villains, for agency DDB Chicago. (Avery has since joined Furlined, Santa Monica.)
While the Production Design Awards competition is in its 10th year, this marks the second year that spotwork has been recognized. IATSE’s Art Directors Guild, Local 800, first established a commercials category to recognize the best work of ’04.
This past weekend, the awards ceremony also honored production design achievements in features and TV programs. The two feature winners were John Myhre for Memoirs Of A Geisha, which topped the period or fantasy film category, and David J. Bomba for Walk The Line, which took the contemporary film category.
Joseph Bennett won for single-camera TV series on the strength of Rome-Episode 1. John Sabato topped multiple-camera TV series for Mad TV (episode 1106). Stuart Wurtzel copped the production design honor in TV movie or miniseries for Empire Falls. And Roy Christopher took the award show variety/music special/documentary category for the 77th annual Academy Awards telecast.
The Art Directors Guild also inducted five more legendary production designers into its Hall of Fame, bringing the number of inductees to an even dozen. The five new inductees are John Box, Hans Dreier, Cedric Gibbons, Jan Scott and Alexandra Trauner.
SUPERLATIVE Signs Director Claudia Abend For Spots and Branded Content
Latin American director/editor and documentary filmmaker Claudia Abend has joined SUPERLATIVE for her first U.S. representation spanning commercials and branded content.
Abend's empathetic docu-style POV has garnered several international awards for the documentary films Hit (2008) and The Flower of Life (2018). Her spotmaking credits include such brands as Procter & Gamble, Nestle and Blue Cross/Blue Shield. SUPERLATIVE has already worked with Abend, together producing a new ad campaign for digital agency Tinuiti and The Honest Company, a consumer goods corporation featuring eco-minded products.
“We found Claudia through her poignant documentaries on the festival circuit,” said SUPERLATIVE creative manager Stefan Dezil. “We are excited about her textured narratives, emotional storytelling, and her powerhouse long-form storytelling abilities, currently on her third feature film. As SUPERLATIVE continues to build our brand after premiering our latest films at Sundance and SXSW, Claudia is the kind of multidimensional artist we are excited to partner with on branded content and beyond. Fluent in English and Spanish, her reel shows real prowess with infants, food and skin products, families both young and old. Great visual storytelling and inspirational doc work.”
Abend began her career in her native Uruguay, studying film and editing in college. “My dad would show me films like Citizen Kane,” she said. “I love cinema and became an editor. It was here that I learned all about communicating human emotion.”
From the get-go, Abend hit it big as a documentary director, teaming with Adrianna Loeff on Hit, a movie chronicling pop artists of Uruguayan music. Abend took home a Best Editing... Read More