By Robert Goldrich
Welcome to SHOOT’s spring edition Directors Series featuring helmers whose range spans Oscar-nominated documentaries, and DGA Award wins in commercials and TV comedy series. One of those Oscar-nominated documentarians, Morgan Spurlock, takes a behind-the-scenes, tongue-in-cheek yet insightful look at product placement and brand integration in his latest documentary, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. The other alluded to documentary filmmaker, Lucy Walker, who earned her Oscar nom this year for Waste Land, has secured her first major spotmaking representation via Supply & Demand.
Also registering with his documentary acumen is Joshua Neale whose Despicable Dick and Righteous Richard is making its world premiere at next month’s Tribeca Film Festival. The film is one of 12 selected for Tribeca’s World Documentary Feature Competition.
The earlier referred to DGA winners are Stacy Wall who back in January earned the Guild honor in Commercials, and Michael Spiller whose TV sitcom directing distinction came on the strength of an episode of Modern Family.
Our mix of profiles also includes Tim Godsall, a nominee for the DGA Commercials honor won by Wall.
The other three DGA Commercial nominees this year–Frank Budgen, Craig Gillespie and Tom Kuntz–are not in this spring Directors installment because all had been profiled relatively recently in prior special editions.
Similarly Tom Hooper, Best Director Oscar winner for The King’s Speech, was profiled in SHOOT’s Fall 2010 Directors Series. He is, however, covered in this issue’s news section feature on the importance of collaborators and collaboration to Academy Award-winning and -nominated work.
Meanwhile our lineup of up-and-coming directors includes: a pair of editors whose spec work as a directorial duo shows considerable promise; a veteran editor who has extended his creative reach into directing, making his documentary debut at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival; an accomplished ad agency entrepreneur/creative director who’s made a successful transition to directing with two series of humorous web shorts for real-world clients; a choreographer turned stylist and recently turned director who has scored high marks for her spec fare; and a director whose spoof of a noted music video became an Internet sensation, leading to her being tabbed as a viral video expert speaker at the TEDxObserver Festival in London.
And then in our Cinematographers & Cameras Series, we meet three DPs who are no strangers to the industry awards season. One earned the Oscar and ASC Award for his lensing of Inception; another won the Film Independent Spirit Award for shooting Black Swan; and the third has been nominated four times in the past five years for ASC Award honors in TV series.
So read on and enjoy. As always, we welcome your feedback.
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