Little Minx

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Since its inception in 1998 by founder Rhea Scott, Little Minx, partnered with Ridley Scott and Associates, has focused on creating artistic and commercial opportunities for its talented young directors, building them into award winners who have worked with some of the top agencies in the industry. Little Minx directors have been spotlighted by the Saatchi & Saatchi Young Directors Showcase in Cannes and have won Grammy, Billboard Music Video, MTV, MVPA, AICP and The Teen Choice Awards. Little Minx specializes in talent development across both the commercial and feature film realms. Little Minx can be found online at Little Minx, as well as on MySpaceand Facebook

Contents 1 Exquisite Corpse 1.1 The Short Films 1.1.1 With The Eyes Of Every Man Riveted Upon Her 1.1.2 She Turns Back and Faces Forward At Peace 1.1.3 She Walked Calmly Disappearing Into The Darkness 1.1.4 Without Missing A Beat, She Asks, "Waffles For Breakfast? 1.1.5 And She Stares Longingly At What She Has Lost 1.2 The Directors 1.2.1 Josh Miller 1.2.2 Chris Nelson 1.2.3 Malik Hassan Sayeed 1.2.4 Phillip Van 2 Press Coverage 3 Notes

[edit] Exquisite Corpse

In 2007, Little Minx teamed up with Jacqueline Bosnjak and Mark Beukes of New York based Idealogue to create a 21st century version of the early 1900s parlour game Exquisite Corpse. Drawing inspiration from the game's unique styling, Little Minx's founder Rhea Scott worked with Idealogue guardians Jacqueline Bosnjak and Mark Beukes to determine the best way to approach this content-driven, non-linear narrative structure.

Focusing on delivering the content across multiple platforms, including iPod, iPhone, and Sony PSP, this film series gave the directors a chance to stretch their imaginations and experiment with new narrative styles. According to Bosnjak and Beukes:

"We met with [Little Minx founder] Rhea [Scott]. She was extremely excited about experimenting with new narrative styles and offering her directors the opportunity to create engaging and compelling stories and content."^[1]

To start the project, rules were established for the film series. First of all, each director had to pick up where the other one left off, carrying over the last line of the script from the preceding film. Secondly, the director also had to represent "Little Minx" at some point in their short film.

Once the ground rules were established, Little Minx and Idealogue enlisted the help of British designer David Pearson.Creating a unique film poster for the "Exquisite Corpse" series, Pearson sparked the imagination of the directors and set off a chain of events that would begin with "With The Eyes of Every Man Riveted Upon Her" by Laurent Briet.

The second film in the series is "She Turns Back and Faces Forward, At Peace" by Chris Nelson.

This is followed by "She Walked Calmly, Disappearing Into the Darkness" by Malik Hassan Sayeed, "Without Missing a Beat, She Asks, 'Waffles for Breakfast?'" by Josh Millerand "And She Stares Longingly At What She Has Lost" by Phillip Van.

[edit] The Short Films

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[edit]
With The Eyes Of Every Man Riveted Upon Her

Directed by Laurent Briet
Summary: That your field is boxing or rope jumping, there will be a time when you meet a challenge that is more than you can chew. Fail to realize that, and you're knocked out.

[edit] She Turns Back and Faces Forward At Peace

Directed by Chris Nelson
Summary: An ordinary looking girl (Cara Failer) will try a different approach than the one her mother taught her, to defeat the competitors at the casting audition she's attending.

[edit] She Walked Calmly Disappearing Into The Darkness

Directed by Malik Hassan Sayeed
Summary: While a boy lies in a hospital bed, we see glimpses of the shooting in which he was injured.

[edit] Without Missing A Beat, She Asks, "Waffles For Breakfast?

Directed by Josh Miller
Summary: Rest assured that, just because you've won that hand of poker, it doesn't mean your life ain't gonna suck anymore.

[edit] And She Stares Longingly At What She Has Lost

Directed by Phillip Van
Summary: A tale of innocence lost and never regained.

[edit] The Directors

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[edit] Josh Miller

Josh began his career in advertising as a chauffeur. After printing the words, “Josh Miller. A copywriter willing to start at the bottom,” on rolls of toilet paper, he placed them in the bathroom stalls of Kirshenbaum & Bond, NY. They took him literally. There, he created renowned campaigns for Duck Head Apparel, Bamboo Lingerie and The Hudson River Keeper.

Foreshadowing his future as a director, Josh approached projects visually, rarely resorting to extensive copy. “I felt like a creative Transgender, as if I were an art director trapped in a copywriter’s body.” He adds, “Now I know, deep down, I was really a director all along. It makes sense now, but it was confusing, especially for my parents.”

Josh went on to be Group Head at Cliff Freeman & Partners, where he created award-winning campaigns for Sauza Tequila, Cherry Coke and Fanta International, as well as Staples and Little Caesars. Josh left Cliff Freeman to move back to his native Los Angeles to be Creative Director of Team One Advertising. There, besides working closely with talented directors like Tony Kaye, Noam Murro and Doug Nichol, Josh documented the slow degradation of commuting daily to the cold, staid industrial office complex in El Segundo by photographing the bottom of a plane landing at LAX each time he passed. The photographs, over 350 of them, are currently being published in a book entitled, Underbelly.

Now, a full-time Director with Little Minx, a company of RSA, Josh was recently featured in Shoot Magazine as one of “The Ones To Watch.” His body of work includes commercials for Animal Planet, Mini Cooper, Imodium AD, Stride Gum and Alfa Insurance.

[edit] Chris Nelson

Chris left his home in Northern California at the age of 15 to begin his career in media as a child actor in Los Angeles. He appeared in numerous television shows, sitcoms, and a movie of the week before giving away his youth to a regular role on a daytime soap opera.

Feeling “too self-conscious” to continue his career as an actor, Chris left L.A. to attend Brown University, assuming the move was a permanent one. But while in school he “kept coming back to wanting to tell stories”, an attraction that led to a degree in creative writing and a screenplay sale which initiated a return to L.A..

Once back in L.A., Chris was introduced to commercial production. He began by writing treatments for other directors; and eventually found himself producing for some truly talented people. He worked on award winning commercials with the likes of Joe Pytka and Rupert Sanders; and feels fortunate to have spent a few years collaborating on music videos and commercials with Herb Ritts.

Directing seemed a natural next step and Chris began working on specs, eventually winning the attention of Rhea Scott of Little Minx, a company of RSA Films, with an L.A. County Fair spot.

Since then, Chris has been selected for the Saatchi & Saatchi New Director’s Showcase at Cannes International Advertising Festival. He has shot award-winning spots for Milwaukee’s Best. Recent work includes another Milwaukee’s Best campaign, as well as spots for Pepto-Bismol and ESPN and interactive work for HBO.

[edit] Malik Hassan Sayeed

Malik Hassan Sayeed has never shied away from immediate success. By 24, Sayeed had already established himself as one of the freshest aesthetic voices in feature film. Shooting for Spike Lee, Stanley Kubrick and Andrew Niccol, the young cinematographer garnered accolades and award nominations alike, including the highly-regarded Best Cinematography nomination from the IFP.

Sayeed has wasted no time in reproducing his meteoric rise through the directorial field. Since arriving at Little Minx, with but one directing credit under his belt, Sayeed has directed videos for Lauryn Hill, Jay-Z, Prince, D’Angelo, and Youssou N’Dour with Wyclef Jean. “Ex-Factor”, for Lauryn Hill, was nominated for 3 MVPA Awards and won 2 Billboard Music Video Awards. Recognizing Sayeed’s originality, Hill commissioned him again on three more music videos, in addition to a documentary.

In the fall of 2001, superstar artists Gwen Stefani, Bono, Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Lopez, Alicia Keyes, Fred Durst, The Backstreet Boys, Ja Rule, Nelly, Britney Spears, Nellie Furtado, P. Diddy and others gathered in New York City to record a new version of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”. Sayeed and co-director Jake Scott not only crafted a call to the world for AIDS awareness, but also brought home the Best R&B video from the 2002 MVPA Awards for their efforts.

Sayeed’s accomplishments in the commercial field have been equally impressive. He was named Best Director at the New York Film Festival, for his work on Polaroid with Goodby Silverstein & Partners. His campaigns for Canon, (featuring Ryuichi Sakamoto), and Wild Turkey landed him on the Commercial Film Producers of Europe list for the Young Directors Award, in Cannes. He was the only American to appear on that elite list. In March 2002, he was awarded Best Spot for Cinema and Best Music for Fuji’s “Urban Lot“ at the Marketing Awards in Canada. “Urban Lot” was also a finalist at the Bessie Awards, in Canada, and won a Craft Award for Best Cinematography. Most recently, Malik’s “My Humps” music video for Black Eyed Peas won the MTV VMA’s Best Hip Hop Video of 2006.

Some of Sayeed’s commercial roster includes: Miller Light, Nike, Adidas, Canon, Dasani, Big Red, Nintendo, Tommy Hilfiger, Fuji Film, Sony, Pringles, Polaroid, Wild Turkey, Nikon, Nike and most recently Hewlett Packard, Samsung, EA Games, Hugo Boss, Reebok and GMC. He’s worked with agencies such as Wieden & Kennedy, Goodby Silverstein and Partners, Saatchi & Saatchi, Berlin Cameron & Partners, BBDO, Deutsch Advertising, TBWA/Chiat Day and others.

Sayeed was second unit DP on Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut and Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca and himself was the DP for Hype Williams’ Belly, (for which he was nominated for the aforementioned IFP award), and Spike Lee’s The Original Kings of Comedy, Girl 6, He Got Game and Clockers.

[edit] Phillip Van

Phillip Van is an MFA candidate in NYU’s Graduate Film Program, Tisch School of the Arts and was raised in Honolulu, Hawaii and Portland, Oregon by his father, a Vietnamese refugee and his mother, a Greek-American.

Phillip's films have screened and won awards around the world in festivals including the Berlin International Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, HBO U.S. Comedy Arts Film Festival, Aspen Shortsfest, and Gen Art Film Festival, among others.

Based on his work, he was chosen out of over 3,000 applicants to direct a short film sponsored by the Berlin International Film Festival.

In the largest jury vote of the festival, 520 filmmakers from 101 countries screened three finalists and Phillip’s genre-bending short, High Maintenance, won the competition.

Next, ten thousand passengers on Delta Airlines flights voted on five award-winning films and High Maintenance was their top pick, garnering Phillip an awards package that included a screening and celebration in honor of his work at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.

The film went on to win Kodak’s 1st place Eastman Scholarship, a BAFTA/LA honorable mention and Grand Jury and Audience Awards at numerous festivals. It is the U.S. winning entry and one of only 4 films selected to screen in Kodak’s program at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. It is also the winner of a 2007 Student Academy Award. In 2007, Phillip Van was also named one of "25 New Faces of Independent Film" by Filmmaker Magazine^[2]

[edit] Press Coverage

Response to the "Exquisite Corpse" series has been overwhelmingly positive.

3D World, the magazine for 3D Artists, as well as 3D Creative Mag^[3] covered the work of Method Studios in the final short film of the series "And She Stares Longingly At What She Has Lost.

“This was a challenging project for us,” admitted Sabrina Elizondo, visual effects producer at Method. “It was also completely irresistible because the creative leeway we were offered was a unique experience. Just about every live action "scene was shot on bluescreen, so defining the look was technically up to our team. The opportunity also lent itself to a close working-relationship with the director, Phil, and that collaborative effort really made a big difference.”^[4]

Creativity Magazine focused on the entire "Exquisite Corpse" series under its "webfilm promotions" banner. Focusing on the development of the project, this piece also featured feedback from director Malik Hassan Sayeed:

"For the viewer, as well as us directors, there is quite a bit of mystery surrounding each film. None of us obviously knows what the other is doing so that unknown generates excitement and intrigue."^[5]

High praise was also passed down by Short of the Week. With an enthusiastic review and subsequent q & a with director Phillip Van, this article brought additional attention to the series.

"...Phillip Van’s luscious frames are beautifully augmented by Method Studios’ visual effects and I was particularly taken by how the oft used ugly duckling turns swan motif of the shedding of glasses, is the transformative moment here that spells utter destruction for the life that once was."^[6]

Soon word spread about the "Exquisite Corpse" series and film websites such as Twitchfilm.net posted an article discussing the series as a whole.

"Scott left her film makers remarkably free to choose their own approaches and topics, the one limitation being that each short had to somehow respond to the final line of the previous short. The result is some interesting work, very much worth a look ..."^[7]

Focusing on the work of commercial directors, advertising websites began to cover Littleminx.tv and Exquisite Corpse. These websites include AdFreak, Trend Watch Daily and Ad-Land.

Ad Freak had this to say about the series:

"The variety of themes, styles of storytelling and visual panache are striking (especially in Sayeed’s evocative and at times almost surreal urban-tough segment entilted "She Walked Calmly, Disappearing Into the Darkness.")."^[8]

In an article entitled "I Wish I Had Directed Them," Trendwatch Daily writer Manuel Faisco had this to say:

"I wish I had directed the movies and animations in them, but I just don’t have the skills and the talent. I don’t know how to film. I can’t draw. I can’t do Flash." ^[9]

AdRants posted an article on the "Exquisite Corpse" series on Friday March 28, 2008. This post featured praise for the series:

"...We were pretty dazzled by this series -- partly because we didn't have to spend money to watch it, and partly because we had no way of predicting how each director would interpret the last line of his predecessor."^[10]

On March 13th,2008 Online Video website Cracklehighlighted the second film in the Exquisite Corpse series entitled "She Turns Back and Faces Forward At Peace." The video was featured as "Today's Top Pick" in the Short FilmShowcase on the website.^[11] "She Walked Calmly, Disappearing into the Darkness" was spotlighted on March 14th, 2008. Over the weekend of March 15th, "And She Stares Longingly At What She Has Lost" was highlighted on Crackle's main page. Then on March 18th, the final film in the Exquisite Corpse series "Without Missing a Beat, She Asks Waffles for Breakfast" was featured on Crackle.

On March 24th, Crackle's Short Film Bloghighlighted the Exquisite Corpse series, bringing attention to Josh Miller's "Without Missing a Beat, She Asks Waffles for Breakfast."^[12] The title of the article: "What Happens When Short Film Director's Play Tag!" This was followed up with a full length interview with Director Phillip Van, posted April 1st, 2008.^[13]

Popular website Dark Roasted Blendposted an article about the Exquisite Corpse film series in their Biscotti Bitssection. It was in this article, which highlights the most interesting links on the web, that Dark Roasted Blend stated:

"Little Minx presents a series of short films, made available online - ranging from supernatural fantasy to gritty realism. Our Favorite? It must be "Waffles for Breakfast" vignette: great script, neat acting."^[14]

This article was later followed up with a detailed interview with director Josh Miller.^[15]

Popular community weblog Metafilter also features a posting of Exquisite Corpse. Highlighted by Carson B, this posting has gain traction on the website, receiving such accolades as:

Wow. All good, but the last one is gorgeous. Thank you, thank you." ^[16]

Cinema Echo Chamber, a film blog from one of the writers of Filmmaker Magazine has posted a series of Q & A's with the four directors from the "Exquisite Corpse" series. In his introduction, the writer had the following to say:

"In the short film format, perhaps because of its inaccessibility to the marketplace, filmmakers can take the types of risks that even the most formally daring feature films often can't take. How refreshing it is to see an ambitious short film, maybe the type that doesn't easily lend itself to festival programming, but that is undeniably reaching to say or be something new and relevant."^[18]

This article was also posted at Filmmaker Magazine's Blog.

Cinematic Happenings Under Development (CHUD) have posted an article on the "Exquisite Corpse" series. Writer Eileen Bolender has this to say about the series:

"One of the highlights of having access to the internet is the opportunity to discover independent films and short stories. Little Minx has done something interesting with the spirit of independent filmmaking not getting lost in the process."^[19]

Digital Content Producerposted an in-depth interview with director Phillip Van on their Briefing Room Blog. Featuring Van's short "And She Stares Longingly...", this article was also be referenced in the April 2008 edition of Digital Content Producer.^[20]

"All of Van’s films have a sense of the indecipherable, something extraordinarily mysterious and dark, teetering almost, but not quite, to the point of morbidity. They seem to balance gloom with enchanting fantasy."^[21]

Film website Cinemattraction also posted an in-depth article on the series. In this article, the writer called the series "...inspired, funny, tragic, mind-bending and unquestionably beautiful."^[22]

This article, a complete with a Q & A from Phillip Van, can also be seen at Brandon Fibbs^[23].

Web Video Report, a division of TV Week featured the film "And She Stares Longingly" as its feature video. This was joined by an article and can be viewed here.^[24]

Nerve.com's The Screengrab film blog covered the Exquisite Corpse series and had this to say:

"'Exquisite Corpse' seems like the vanguard for a more business-minded approach that might be called cutting-edge practical: by giving commercial directors the chance to show how they might do if given the chance to stretch a little--say, behind the camera on a theatrical feature film--it may serve industry people as the latest concept in audition reels, while attracting moviegoers who are curious to see where the next Ridley Scott or Brett Ratner might be coming from."^[25]

The Smalls, a website focused on independent short films, posted a feature article on the Exquisite Corpse series entitled "Exquisite Short Films Inspired by Parlour Game." The writer had this to say about the series: "Next time you’re in the mood for a collection of short films, check out a cool series created in 2007 called Exquisite Corpse."^[26]

The popular The Film Panel Notetakerposted an interview with Director Phillip Van regarding his career. In this interview, Van makes mention of the "Exquisite Corpse" project, discussing its development. You can see this article here^[27]. Following its posting, this coverage was also picked up by Filmmaker Magazine^[28], Green Cine Daily^[29] and KGB Film Blog ^[30]

Articles have also been posted at Motionographer^[31] LVHRD.org^[32], Brandonfibbs.com^[33], The Ready Room^[34], Green Cine Daily^[35],MSS Vision^[36], Stream Online^[37] ,Tilzy TV^[38],Sideways Around^[39],Operation Crossroads^[40], This Savage Art^[41], Monkey & Carbombs^[42], ShowHype^[43], Life Without Toast^[44], Jaiku^[45],Hasta La Creative^[46], About Marketing^[47],What's Next^[48], Hunch^[49], Inspyed Blog^[50], Creative In London^[51], Internet Video Articles^[52] and Creaternity.com^[53].

[edit] Notes