Director/DP Rich Michell has joined STORY for national representation in advertising. A versatile talent, Michell combines storytelling skill with deep experience in product and tabletop cinematography. His credits include such brands as 3M/Scotch, General Mills, Target, Subway, UnitedHealthCare and Wendy’s.
Michell comes to STORY following a long run with Twist, Minneapolis, a company he co-founded. There, he developed a strong national and regional client base. He directed more than a dozen commercials for 3M through Grey, NY, many combining performance, product and humor. One recent spot features a Post-It note sticky enough to hold a terrier off the ground.
“The art direction and choreography of each spot is defined to fit the function and design of the product,” Michell says. “In the process, we developed a graphic and playful style that highlight the individual products and create a cohesive design for the variety of 3M brands.”
In a spot for the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival, a boy turns his apartment into a make-shift movie theater: he adjusts a window to provide a “letterbox” view of the apartment of a quarreling French couple across the way.
Trained as a fine artist, Michell began his career as a camera operator and cinematographer. He broke into directing through tabletop work, but soon expanded into performance-driven storytelling.
STORY, headed by EP Mark Androw, is represented on the East Coast by SuperPowers, in the Midwest, in the Southeast by Miller + Associates, in the Southwest by Gossip!, and on the West Coast by Yvette Lubinsky.
