SHIPPING + HANDLING, producers of high-end postproduction finishing, color grading, motion design, and animation work for commercials, music videos and feature films as well as VR and AR media, has added VFX creative director Jerry Spivack as well as colorists Michael Pethel and Matthew Schwab.
Alongside executive producer Scott Friske and current creative director Casey Price, Spivack will support in leading the creative bandwidth of SHIPPING + HANDLING. As the creative director/co-founder at Ring of Fire, Spivack was responsible for crafting and spearheading VFX on commercials for brands including FedEx, Nike and Jaguar; episodic work for series television including Netflix’s Wormwood and 12 seasons of FX’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia; promos for NBC’s The Voice and Titan Games; and feature films such as Sony Pictures’ Spider-Man 2, Bold Films’ Drive, and Warner Bros.’ The Bucket List.
As a founding partner of Company 3, colorist Pethel has been delivering beautiful content to screens, small and large for over 20 years. For the last five years, Pethel has serviced client and director relationships under his BeachHouse Color brand which he will continue to maintain. Pethel’s body of work includes campaigns for Carl’s Jr., Chase, Coke, Comcast/Xfinity, Hyundai, Jeep, Netflix, and Southwest Airlines.
Colorist Schwab of Roving Picture Company has worked closely with SHIPPING + HANDLING on multiple campaigns for Apple, Acura, QuickBooks, and numerous others over the last two years. He now formally comes on board the SHIPPING + HANDLING roster. Aside from SHIPPING + HANDLING projects, Schwab will continue to also be available through Roving Picture Company. Schwab has collaborated on projects for Amazon, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, NatGeo, Netflix, Nike, Sony PlayStation, and Smirnoff.
Spivack, Pethel an Schwab will be operating out of SHIPPING + HANDLING’s office with sister company, editorial post house Spot Welders’ shared creative campus on the West Coast.
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