Film Critic Godfrey Cheshire Joins Raleigh Metro Magazine
October 1, 2008 at 11:05 pm | In Film Production, film critics | Leave a CommentTags: Film, film critic, Moving Midway, North Carolina writers, Raleigh Metro Magazine
Godfrey Cheshire
October 1, 2008 (RALEIGH, NC) – Godfrey Cheshire, the Raleigh-born New York City-based film critic – and writer and director of the critically acclaimed documentary film Moving Midway – will join Raleigh’s Metro Magazine beginning with the November 2008 edition.
Cheshire will write a monthly essay for Metro and contribute regularly online to www.metronc.com. Cheshire is ending his previous association with The Independent Weekly of Durham.
Cheshire, who served as chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle is an award-winning film critic and journalist whose writings on film have appeared in numerous national and international publications. His areas of special interest include Southern and American independent filmmaking; international films (he was responsible for introducing films from Iran and China to the US); and the conversion to digital cinema.
Born and raised in Raleigh, N.C., Cheshire was educated at the Ravenscroft School, Raleigh public schools, Virginia Episcopal School, and UNC-Chapel Hill. He began his career by joining founder Bernie Reeves at the former Spectator Magazine in 1978. He served as an editor and the magazine’s film critic for the next 20 years.
Metro Magazine’s editor and publisher Bernie Reeves says Cheshire’s new association with Metro “brings us full circle.”
“Thirty years ago this fall, I joined Bernie in founding Spectator Magazine, an innovative and ultimately very successful alternative weekly for the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area,” Cheshire said. “Although my primary duties during the magazine’s first dozen years involved supervising its arts coverage, I also got my start as a professional film critic in 1978, beginning a conversation about movies with North Carolina readers that continues to this day.”
Cheshire and Reeves have collaborated on many projects since then, including numerous film festivals and other special events – including the Comboland project in 1985. Cheshire, frustrated that the music scene in the Triangle was ignored by area and national media, compiled a collection of local music and delivered it to the UK and European market where it was well received and resulted in deals for several bands.
Most recently, they collaborated on Cheshire’s film Moving Midway.
“In early 2004, I started making Moving Midway – my documentary about my family’s plantation outside Raleigh – and Bernie came aboard as the film’s executive producer,” Cheshire said. “When the film was released to great reviews in New York in September, I felt like a new chapter in my life began. I am now a filmmaker with a couple of exciting new projects that I’m working on. But I also am still a critic and writer, and I am extraordinarily pleased that Bernie has invited me to be part of the Metro family.
“Thirty years on, Bernie remains a visionary and an innovator as well as a friend,” he added. “Much like Spectator, Metro is a vital, forward-looking publication that has a deep connection to the part of North Carolina where we grew up and started out professionally. I am looking forward to returning ‘home,’ yet again, by writing for its pages.”
About Godfrey Cheshire:
Cheshire moved to New York in 1991 and began a 10-year stint as chief film critic for the Manhattan weekly New York Press. From 1995-2000, he reviewed for the show business journal Variety, for which he covered Cannes, Sundance, Montreal and other festivals. His reviews and articles have also appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Village Voice, Interview, Filmmaker, Cineaste, Oxford American, The American Scholar, Cinemaya and Film International, and have been anthologized in several books.
In 1992, Film Comment invited him to write articles on Chinese and Iranian films. The first of these assignments occasioned a trip to Beijing and led to subsequent investigative visits to Hong Kong and Taiwan. The second involved several visits to Iran beginning in 1997; his interest in Iranian culture has entailed an ongoing study of Islamic thought and its connection to Western philosophy, as well as several projects aimed at using film to bridge the political divide between the U.S. and Iran.
In 1995, Cheshire and Spectator helped organize the North Carolina Film and Video Festival, and he served as artistic director for the three years of its existence. He has served as an advisor, programmer, panelist and juror at numerous other festivals in the U.S. and internationally.
In 1999, his essay “The Death of Film/The Decay of Cinema,” about the cultural and aesthetic ramifications of the conversion to digital cinema, gained international attention and led to several events including a “Millennial Symposium” to discuss his ideas at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and special panels at the Sundance and Seattle film festivals.
A former chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle, Cheshire is also a member of the National Society of Film Critics and the international critics group FIPRESCI. Twice since 2000, his film reviews have won Best Arts Criticism prizes from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies.
In spring, 2007, he premiered his first feature film, Moving Midway, a documentary about the relocation of his family’s plantation and the Southern plantation’s place in American myth, on which he served as writer, director, narrator and producer. While in North Carolina making the film, he taught a course in the History of Film at his old alma mater, UNC-Chapel Hill. He is currently developing two other feature film projects, both large-scale historical drama.
Sedna Films Completes Three Challenging Commercials for Florida Medical Centers
April 17, 2008 at 1:14 am | In Film Production | Leave a CommentTags: Dirk Detweiler, Jon Hill, Sedna Films, tv commercials
April 16, 2008 (SANTA MONICA, CA) – After Sedna Films, a commercial production company based in Santa Monica, recently completed three new 30-second spots by advertising agency Fenner and Hamill of Atlanta, GA, for Lakeland Regional Medical Center & Lakeland Regional Cancer Center in Lakeland, Florida, director Jon Hill summed up the process as “a very humbling experience.”
“We were in the biggest and busiest hospital in central Florida so we had be extra sensitive to that environment — where people’s lives were actually being saved,” Hill explained. “We had to have not only the best but the smallest crew because of space constraints. We really had to pare down our equipment and each cart couldn’t be more noticeable than, say, a gurney. We couldn’t interfere with the normal work of the hospital, and we had to be prepared to move or change schedule at a second’s notice. It was an amazing experience.”
Fenner and Hamill’s Tracy Fenner (principal), Jane Kelley (art director), and Trisha Parrish (writer) created the campaign, which focuses on the state-of-the-art technologies available to patients at the centers and the people who operate them. They combine live action and “real” people with graceful animation. Entitled “Women’s Services Mobile,” “Cardiac Butterfly” and “Cancer Globe,” the short stories of the centers’ obstetrics, cardiac and cancer technologies had to fit inside an animated butterfly (whose wings move), globe (that spins), and crib mobile (that turns), yet keep moving to maintain interest.
“The imagery needed to have motion,” Hill said. “So we designed shots that would reveal things as they moved. We used a blend of organic camera movement and the interaction of the people with the technology to keep up the interest within the scenes and at the same time work smoothly within the VFX and animation environment created by VFX artist Gavin Holmes and creative director Jeff Doud at R!OT Atlanta.”
Working with “real” people posed another challenge – one this particular director enjoys.
“Ninety-eight percent of the talent in the spots are ‘real’ people,” Hill said. “I love working with ‘real’ people. It’s interesting to see what they will do in their world. We wanted to see real procedures, and it was up to them to show us just that. At times I was more observing than directing. So we were able to see just how intense it really is to do what these doctors, nurses and technicians do even though they were just pretending. They still went at it with the same intensity. That made the magic happen and the scenes came to life.”
To solve the space and time constraints, Sedna Films’ crew carefully selected and manipulated their gear. “We used a small jib arm with a 2575 O’Connor head, a Cartoni Dutch head, and an Arriflex 435 mounted on the end. I believe we pushed the gear to new heights and came out with a great look and feel in the spots.”
Hill praised R!OT’s VFX artists for the success of the final products. “These guys do amazing work,” he said. “The trick here was combining the real visuals with the unreal animations and finding a happy ground where the two would co-exist.”
This was Hill’s fourth project with Fenner and Hamill.
Sedna Films, Inc. is a member of the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP). Other clients include TNT, Shell, Panasonic, Honda, Sara Lee, Sony/BMG, Vespa, UNICEF, The NBA, and The Weather Channel. Sedna Films is represented on the west coast by Lisa Schreiber of Boardalicous in Hermosa Beach, CA (lisa@sednafilms.com), on the east coast by Rich Schafler of Schafler Artists Management in New York, NY (rich@sednafilms.com) and in the mid-west by Dwayne Petch of Petch and Company in Westerville, Ohio (Dwayne@sednafilms.com).
For more information on Sedna Films, visit http://www.sednafilms.com.
Shoot Magazine Praises PSA for Raleigh,NC, Holocaust Commemoration
March 3, 2008 at 5:09 pm | In Film Production | Leave a CommentTags: Allen Weiss, Holocaust, Jewish news, NC Council on the Holocaust, North Carolina, Raleigh, Shoot magazine
March 3, 2008 (RALEIGH, NC) – “Remember,” a 30-section public service announcement (PSA) to support the annual Holocaust Commemoration in Raleigh, North Carolina, is featured this week in SHOOT, a national magazine, under the headline: “The Best Work You May Never See.”
Film director Allen Weiss of Raleigh wrote, directed and executive produced the PSA, for the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust. Weiss is the son of a 78-year-old Survivor who has carried the number the Nazis tattooed on his arm for 65 years. His father’s numbers inspired the concept behind “Remember,” Weiss said:
“The central concept of this piece is this: There is no better way to assert the fact that people are individuals and not numbers, than to assign numbers to people,” he said. “That’s exactly what the Nazi machine did. So this concept is simple — have Survivors, and their progeny, appear on camera and simply, bluntly, state their number.”
Trailblazers Studio in Raleigh donated time, equipment and a crew to produce the spot, which should air throughout the Triangle area (Raleigh, Durham Chapel Hill) area of North Carolina.
“In the wake of such a global catastrophe, this project is nothing more than a pebble tossed in the ocean,” Weiss said. “But the ripples that those pebbles create can be huge — as long as people keep tossing the pebbles, nobody will forget what they mean or where they came from.”
Shoot Magazine has been a leading national weekly publication for creative and production decision-makers at advertising agencies and in the television and film production industry for 46 years. Its contents are also available online to registered viewers at www.shootonline.com.
For more information on Remember, contact Allen Weiss at allwss@earthlink.net or call 919-272-8834.
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Filmmaker, Holocaust Survivors at Work on “Remember”
February 5, 2008 at 11:11 pm | In Film Production | 1 CommentTags: Allen Weiss, filmmaking, Holocaust, North Carolina, Raleigh, Red Truck, Survivors, Trailblazers
February 5, 2008 (RALEIGH, NC) — Each year, in cities across the nation, special services are held to remember the Holocaust, honor its survivors, and raise awareness so that this atrocity will never happen again.
In Raleigh, North Carolina, a film director and the son of a 78-year-old survivor who has carried the number the Nazis tattooed on his arm for 65 years, has conceived of a way to support the effort through a public service announcement (PSA) that focuses on those haunting numbers.
Allen Weiss, whose father Harry managed to survive the Nazi death camps in Landesberg, Dachau and Aucshwitz, is working with Trailblazers production company in Raleigh to create “Remember,” a 30-second PSA that features survivors and their progeny – children, grandchildren – including his own father and his two daughters, Emily and Natalie Weiss. Trailblazers is donating time, equipment and crew to produce the spot, which should air throughout North Carolina (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill) if local television stations pick it up.
Coming up with the concept of “Remember” was just a matter of time, Weiss said.
“Being the child of a survivor, doing something to keep the Holocaust in the mind of the public was, to me, a given.
“The central concept of this piece is this: There is no better way to assert the fact that people are individuals and not numbers, than to assign numbers to people. That’s exactly what the Nazi machine did. So this concept is simple — have Survivors, and their progeny, appear on camera and simply, bluntly, state their number.”
After putting the idea on paper, he sought the approval of the person most responsible for it — his father.
“After he gave it his blessing, I brought it before the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust,” Weiss said. “They fully endorsed and approved the idea, but there is no money for production. So I called upon everyone I knew in the production community, and the support was overwhelming. The biggest endorsement and commitment came from Trailblazer Studios/Red Truck Films, right here in Raleigh. I have had an excellent relationship with them for many years, and their commitment was immediate and comprehensive.”
With the Council’s help, Weiss sought out other survivors. “This is at once the toughest and easiest casting job I’ve ever had,” Weiss said. “Easy because, well, they are who they are. And tough for the same reason.”
Two other survivors – Robert Spitz and Peter Leonard, both of Raleigh – agreed and showed up at Trailblazers’ studios recently to commit their faces and stories to film.
Three children of survivors also made themselves available to the production — Anya Gordon (of Irregardless restaurant), Mike Abramson (chairman of the NC Council on he Holocaust) and Maureen Werthheimer. Weithheimer’s two daughters — Kaylyn & Ariana Siporin – joined Harry Weiss’ granddaughters on film as grandchildren of survivors.
Allen Weiss and Trailblazers are editing the PSA now and hope to have it ready to present to area television stations within the month.
“In the wake of such a global catastrophe, this project is nothing more than a pebble tossed in the ocean,” Weiss said. “But the ripples that those pebbles create can be huge — as long as people keep tossing the pebbles, nobody will forget what they mean or where they came from.”
For more information on Remember, contact Allen Weiss at allwss@earthlink.net or call 919-272-8834.
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NC Film Director Completes New Series of TV Spots for Virginia-based Children’s Hospital
January 25, 2008 at 3:07 am | In Film Production | Leave a CommentJanuary 22, 2008 (RALEIGH, NC) — Allen Weiss, a film director based in Raleigh, recently completed a series of 30-sec television spots for Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters (CHKD) in Norfolk, Virginia’s only free-standing, full-service pediatric hospital, treating children from birth through age 21 and the site of the state’s only dedicated pediatric emergency center.
The series, created by Davis Advertising of Virginia Beach and produced by Park Group of Richmond, promotes CHKD’s expansion of its comprehensive children’s health care into all other communities in the state’s Tidewater/Hampton Roads area.
“We cast children and teenagers to depict various real-case CHKD experiences in these Tidewater communities,” Weiss explained. “We wanted to make the point that the hospital means different things to different children in these areas.”
Shooting took place in several locations, including Virginia Beach (at sunrise), the William & Mary campus in Historic Williamsburg, and along the James River in Norfolk. The visual “clue” that held them all together was large-scale version of children’s wooden blocks that form the CHKD logo.
The multiple locations brought on a challenge. “Fitting so many locations into a given number of shoot days with no contingency for bad weather – that was a challenge,” he said. “I’m not a particularly religious man, but I prayed a lot!”
The weather cooperated and the shoot went off without a hitch.
“This was my second experience with this agency and this client,” said Weiss, who worked with both on an earlier hospital campaign. “As always, they were trusting and open to input. They assemble people who they feel are the best for a particular job then let those people go about doing their job. And for me, that trust extended all the way through the mostly Richmond-based crew, including director of photography Kevin Burger.”
The series of spots, with editing and custom music done in-house at Park Group, is being aired throughout the Tidewater area, which includes Chesapeake, Hampton, Isle of Wight, Newport News, Norfolk, Suffolk, Smithfield, Portsmouth, Virginia Beach and Williamsburg.
Director/Cameraman Allen Weiss is represented by Sedna Films of Santa Monica, CA, and Park Group in Richmond. His style of evocative storytelling has attracted such clients as Saatchi & Saatchi, Leo Burnett, D’Arcy, Euro RSCG Tatham and Fallon McElliot, among others. Weiss recently completed projects for 1st NBC Bank, One A Day Vitamins, NStar Energy, Wavesport, Bank of Belgium, and Virginia Beach Tourism. For more information on Allen Weiss, go to www.sednafilms.com.
For more information on CHKD, visit www.chkd.org.
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“Day-in-the-Life” Spots Show Up-and-Coming Athletes Choosing Ball Park Franks for Power Snacks
January 12, 2008 at 9:07 pm | In Film Production | Leave a CommentTags: Ball Park Franks, Jon Hill, Patrick Hernandez, Sedna Films, skateboard, Timothy Sebastian
(LOS ANGELES, CA) – Sedna Films, a commercial production company based in Santa Monica, recently teamed up with Sara Lee/Ball Park Franks to create a couple of high-energy, high-action, 60-second spots that capture “a day in the lives” of super-skateboarder Patrick Hernandez and Olympics-bound high-jumper Timothy Sebastian, who, according to the commercials, choose Ball Park Franks for their power-snack of choice.
“The concept is that these guys are exceptional athletes who have too much energy and too much going on to take the time out to sit down for a meal,” explained Sedna’s executive producer Dirk Detweiler. “So when they need to grab a quick snack, that snack is a hot dog.”
To make the point, Sedna and director/cameraman Jon Hill spent four days with the boys on locations around Los Angeles, including a West LA Skate Park, a skate ramp built for community kids at a United Methodist Church in Venice, and Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga where Timothy Sebastian trains in track and field, specifically the high-jump.
To get the in-your-face shots he wanted at the skate park, Hill positioned himself down inside the concrete “bowls” and filmed Patrick Hernandez in action all around him. “That was a bit of a challenge,” Detweiler noted.
At the church’s skate ramp, the production crew strapped a camera directly onto a skateboard and let it fly. Occasionally, Hill climbed on a board himself for a little point-of-view action. The Ball Park Franks made their appearance when Patrick’s mother brought a big cooler full of hotdogs out to the ramp for all the kids.
“Everyone involved from pre-production to post did an amazing job of realizing the vision of this project,” said Hill. “Our challenge was to capture and piece together stories from 24-hour experiences of hanging with Tim & Pat. We’ve created windows to these amazing kids’ dreams, lives and aspirations that we all can relate to.”
Timothy Sebastian’s action sequences take place at Chaffey College where he holds the state championship for jumping seven feet, three inches. (He told the crew he hopes to qualify for the Olympics at seven feet five inches.) Eventually, Tim and some track buddies, take a quick break to scarf down some Ball Park Franks at a Junior Olympics track meet where they are checking out the competition.
“Those four days were a lot of fun,” Detweiler said. “The boys are truly amazing at what they do. It was exciting to watch them, and they couldn’t have been more cooperative.”
Hill and camera assistant Matt Goetz kept two cameras running for every sequence, Detweiler said. “We tried to collect as much footage as we could to make the spots very high-energy.” The final product, edited by Todd Betts’ of The Reel Thing, Inc., a post-production facility in Santa Monica, with graphic illustrations and special effects by Smoke artist Moody Glasgow, will include 24p HD, 24p SD, film and digital stills.
“Jon Hill loves to keep the camera rolling in order to capture all the unexpected moments that can really add to a piece,” said Doug Klekner, The Reel Thing’s executive producer. “The final outcome feels much more spontaneous. This does bring a bigger challenge to the editing process but Todd Betts knows no fear for this, having worked on many underground videos. The graphics added a whole other element to the spots and we had a lot of fun creating the look. All in all it was a great project for our shop.”
When editing is complete, the spots will first appear on the Internet on YouTube. Parent company Sara Lee intends to use the spots to create more awareness for its www.myhunger.com website.
Sedna Films, Inc. is a member of the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP). Other clients include TNT, Shell, Panasonic, Honda, Sony/BMG, Vespa, UNICEF, The NBA, and The Weather Channel. Sedna Films is represented on the west coast by Lisa Schreiber of Boardalicous in Hermosa Beach, CA (lisa@sednafilms.com), on the east coast by Rich Schafler of Schafler Artists Management in New York, NY (rich@sednafilms.com) and in the mid-west by Dwayne Petch of Petch and Company in Westerville, Ohio (Dwayne@sednafilms.com).
For more information on Sedna Films, visit http://www.sednafilms.com.
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Sedna Films Adds To Staff
January 4, 2008 at 6:15 pm | In Film Production, Uncategorized | Leave a CommentTags: Africa, Commercials, Dirk Detweiler, Film, Heather Weinstock, Production, Santa Monica, Sedna Films, TV
January 3, 1008 (SANTA MONICA, CA) – Sedna Films, a commercial production company, recently hired Moses Mugo to serve as manager of its Santa Monica office.
Mugo moved from Africa to the United States in 1990 when he was 18 to pursue an education. He worked in freelance production for a number of years until he earned enough money to put himself through college. In 2005 he graduated from California State University at Fullerton with a degree in Political Science in 2005.
Heather Weinstock, head of production at Sedna, first met Mugo while she was working as a second assistant director (AD) in freelance production.
“He started out working for me as a PA but was one of those people who just showed initiative and quickly moved up the production ladder,” she said. “He was a huge help to me on set then and I’m extremely thrilled he will back with me at Sedna.”
As office manager, Mugo will be responsible for day-to-day administrative and clerical duties. He will also work closely with Sedna’s sales representatives and directors on treatments, reels, and other needs.
When he retires from his entertainment career, Mugo plans to move back to Africa and get involved in politics, Weinstock noted.
Sedna Films, Inc. is a member of the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP). Other clients include TNT, Shell, Panasonic, Honda, Sony/BMG, Vespa, UNICEF, The NBA, and The Weather Channel. Sedna Films is represented on the west coast by Lisa Schreiber of Boardalicous in Hermosa Beach, CA (lisa@sednafilms.com), on the east coast by Rich Schafler of Schafler Artists Management in New York, NY (rich@sednafilms.com) and in the mid-west by Dwayne Petch of Petch and Company in Westerville, Ohio (Dwayne@sednafilms.com).
For more information on Sedna Films, visit http://www.sednafilms.com.
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