Editorial, finishing, and VFX studio Uppercut is adding two team members to its recently opened Atlanta office. Flame artist Chelsea Pistono is brand new to its roster of talent, and editor George Dodsworth moves to Atlanta from Uppercut’s flagship shop in the heart of New York’s Flatiron District.
Pistono began her career in New York where she spent over seven years working in VFX at both boutique post houses and global studios. In 2017, she moved to Atlanta. She graduated from The University of Georgia in 2009 with a focus on filmmaking and video production. She specializes in visual effects and beauty retouching and has worked with a number of top advertising agencies, including Wunderman Thompson, HUGE, Wieden + Kennedy, and BBDO with clients like Tom Ford, Reebok, Revlon, Calvin Klein, Samsung, and Coca-Cola. Prior to joining Uppercut, she was at Method’s Atlanta studio.
After starting his career in VFX, Dodsworth quickly discovered he had a passion for storytelling. Dodsworth brought this passion to editing, where he creates impactful stories, striving to produce an emotional response from the viewer. “I want to make them laugh or cry in 30 seconds or less,” he says. These skills are most recently evidenced in his work for Volvo, "Safety Heroes," directed by Christopher Ewers. With candid musings delivered in black and white, allowing you to focus more fully on the humanity in each of their faces, these safety specialists at the Volvo manufacturing plant in South Carolina share what their roles mean to them. Dodsworth, whose other clients include Blue Cross, Toyota, Verizon, Mercedes, and Adidas, was recently promoted to editor after joining Uppercut’s NYC studio as a cutting assistant in 2019. Dodsworth’s relocation to Atlanta marks the Brit’s return to the city, as he first moved to Atlanta post-college, living there for two years.
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