The Den has added editor Tobias Suhm to its team as a partner. He joins a talent roster at the bicoastal edit house which includes Christjan Jordan, Kate Owen, Eric Alexander-Hughes, Katie Cali, Andrew Ratzlaff and Ross Birchall.
Suhm, who had previously been at Whitehouse Post, has worked with international brands and garnered accolades from awards competitions such as CLIO and the Webbys. The Beardyman music video, “6 am (Ready to Write),” featuring Joe Rogan and directed by his long-time friend and collaborator, Ian Pons Jewell, won the UK Music Video Award for Best Dance Music Video last year. Suhm’s Skittles ad, “Yogurt Boy,” and the Michelob spot “Call from Nature” are also among the work he’s most proud of.
“I like that editing is a kind of intangible mystery artform,” said Suhm. “Everyone knows what a cinematographer does or a screenwriter but when it comes to editing it all seems to be a kind of mystery that is hard to come by–and yet it has such a tremendous impact on the overall outcome of a film.”
“Tobias is an amazing artist,” said editor Jordan, co-founder of The Den. “He is an epic storyteller and his work truly showcases both his editing skills and his creativity. I am beyond thrilled to have him join us as a partner at The Den. His warmth, humor, and expertise will help continue to shape our growing company.”
Suhm hails from a small town in the southwest corner of Germany, known as the Black Forest. Close to the border of France and Switzerland, the fairytale-esque area provided an idyllic background to a childhood filled with ‘80s movies, including every Spielberg classic. This early fascination with films, including delving into books, making-ofs, and behind-the-scenes accounts, led him to begin editing home footage that he and his friend would shoot on a miniDV camera.
After high school, Suhm left for Munich where he completed a three-year film editing apprenticeship at a German broadcast station before heading to film school. He attended the noted Filmakademie Baden- Württemberg. Upon graduating, he moved to Berlin, where he lived and worked for nine years until making the leap to Los Angeles to edit at Whitehouse Post.
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