Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners (BSSP) has appointed Lauren Trojan as its new business development director. Within this role, Trojan is charged with generating new business leads and ultimately building new relationships for BSSP–particularly with brands that would benefit from the agency’s expertise in the automotive, health & wellness, sports and entertainment, and CPG categories. Trojan will be directly reporting to BSSP’s president, Patrick Kiss. As a 15-year veteran of the industry and accomplished business development professional, Trojan has worked for a variety of ad agencies, big and small–including, McKinney, CP+B, Vladimir Jones, Sterling-Rice Group and Fortnight Collective. Throughout her time at these agencies, some of her most valuable wins include but are not limited to, Hotels.com, Jimmy Fallon, Infiniti, Slimfast, Bolthouse Farms, P&G, PetArmor, Ulta, Crocs and Suja….
Advanced Systems Group, LLC (ASG), a technology and services provider for media creatives and content owners, has brought Kelly Fox aboard as a strategic account executive. In her new role, Fox will focus on the development of business relationships with key accounts in the Central, Rocky Mountain, and Pacific Northwest regions of the U.S. Fox will be part of ASG’s sales team, reporting to Tyler Berry, sales director, Central Region. Fox joins ASG after spending the last 16 years working with broadcasters, Fortune 500 companies, video service providers, production companies, and event venues as an account manager at Grass Valley. While there, she worked closely with Sam Craig, now ASG’s VP of cloud production engineering, on the adoption and sales of Grass Valley’s AMPP (Agile Media Processing Platform) SaaS, and other live production, asset management, and on-prem solutions….
Riedel Communications–which designs, manufactures, and distributes real-time video, audio, data, and communications networks for broadcast, pro audio, event, sports, theater, and security applications–has appointed Sjoerd Klinkers to the position of sales manager for the Benelux region. An experienced information technology specialist, Klinkers is skilled in AV solutions design, account management, and project engineering. He will report to Wilbert Kooij, regional sales director, Northern Europe, and Benelux, as he strengthens the company’s relations throughout Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Before joining Riedel, Klinkers served as brand manager for Legrand AV, where he developed, managed, and supported the company’s sales channels while assisting in the design of AV and IT systems for hardware, software, and connectivity. He had also served as technical account manager for Grass Valley, a Belden Brand, where he was involved in technical account management for key customers, as well as service and support operations….
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