Welcome to SHOOT’s spring edition Directors/Producers Series featuring directors who have broken new ground on assorted fronts, producers’ perspectives on directors, a look at promising new directorial talent, and conversations with notable cinematographers about work which has scored on the recently wrapped awards show circuit.
In our lineup of Director Profiles, we have this year’s Best Director Oscar winner Ang Lee (for Life of Pi); fellow nominee Benh Zeitlin (Beasts of the Southern Wild); the duo of Sean and Andrea Fine who won the Short Subject Documentary Oscar on the strength of INOCENTE; Cynthia Wade who was nominated in that same category for the moving Mondays at Racine; Jake Scott whose recent exploits at RSA include a pair of distinctly different, high-profile Super Bowl commercials; noted spotmaker Henry-Alex Rubin who is making his fiction feature filmmaking debut with Disconnect; and James Stewart whose 3-D short recently made its world premiere at the TED Conference in Long Beach, Calif.
We also have some select Producer Profiles, including Anonymous Content sr. executive producer Eric Stern and line producer John Benet who share insights on collaborating with Alejandro Gonz�lez I��rritu, a feature filmmaker who won the DGA Award as Best Commercial Director of 2012; Mino Jarjoura, who’s starting a new career chapter as executive producer at Hungry Man’s Los Angeles office after seven years as director Bryan Buckley’s producer, which included their teaming on this year’s Live Action Short Film Oscar nominee Asad; and Richard J. Bosner, line producer on Fruitvale, which marked the feature directorial debut of Ryan Coogler.
Additionally the roster of Up-and-Coming Directors in our feature story coverage includes the helmer of nine “mom-u-mentaries” in Procter & Gamble’s lauded Summer Olympics “Thank you, Mom” campaign; an editor who’s made a successful transition to the director’s chair, underscored by his feature filmmaking debut at the recently wrapped South By Southwest Film Festival; a director whose digital storytelling acumen has generated industry buzz, perhaps most notably for a short that puts viewers in the shoes of a young woman dealing with autism; and a filmmaker whose student commercial has won honors at the AICP Show, the Young Director Awards and the Clios, leading to her first commercial production house affiliation.
Plus in our Cinematographers Series, we meet four DPs whose work gained major recognition this awards show season: Rachel Morrison, who lensed Fruitvale, which won both the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Award and the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival; Ben Richardson, winner of this year’s Film Independent Spirit Award as well as the 2012 Sundance honor for Best Cinematography on the basis of Beasts of the Southern Wild; Claudio Miranda, ASC, who recently won the Best Cinematography Oscar for Life of Pi; and Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC, who earned the ASC Feature Film Achievement Award for Skyfall.
So read on and enjoy. As always, we very much welcome your feedback.
–Robert Goldrich
Editor
rgoldrich@shootonline.com
