Chel White

Chel White

Chel White, 2013
Born (1959-05-30) May 30, 1959
Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.
Alma mater Antioch University
Occupation filmmaker, director, composer
Years active 1985-present

Chel White is an American film director, commercial and music video director, composer, actor, screenwriter, and visual effects supervisor on feature films.[1] He is co-founder of the international production company Bent Image Lab[2] in Portland, Oregon, along with co-founders Ray Di Carlo and David Daniels.

Known for his first person narratives and stylized use of images, White's films explore love, obsession, alienation, memories, and dreams. He uses allegory and frequently black humor to paint pictures of the human experience.[3] His narrative films are often told from the perspective of the estranged individual; the outsider looking in.[4] He has made three films based on the work of Peabody Award winning radio personality and writer Joe Frank[5] (Dirt, Soulmate, and Magda). White has directed music videos for Radiohead's lead singer Thom Yorke, The Melvins,[6] Tom Brosseau, Chrysta Bell & David Lynch, and collaborated with the Oregon Symphony.[7] The Austin Chronicle says, "(Chel White's) work seems to dispatch itself in some secret, subversive code, flashing messages amid animation, obscure stock footage, and actors with crazy eyes."[8]

Biography

Chel White was born May 30, 1959, in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. White cites his earliest influence as being the Surrealist painting he was exposed to in grade school when visiting the Art Institute of Chicago.[9] He began making films in high school and went on to receive a Bachelor of Arts degree in Visual Arts, with a central focus on experimental film, from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Independent Filmmaker

Chel White began making independent short films after college, starting with Metal Dogs of India (1985), which was drawn on clear film and made without a camera. In 1991, White completed Choreography for Copy Machine (Photocopy Cha Cha), an animated film created solely by using the unique photographic capabilities of a photocopier to generate sequential pictures of hands, faces, and other body parts. The film is widely considered the first noteworthy animated film using this technique.[10] The Washington Post describes it as “(a) musical frolic which wittily builds on ghostly, distorted images crossing the plate glass of a copier.”[11] The films that followed were Dirt (1998), Soulmate (2000), Passage (2001), Magda (2004), A Painful Glimpse Into My Writing Process in Less Than 60 Seconds (2005), and Wind (2007). His films have screened in the Sundance Film Festival,[12] Berlin Film Festival,[13] International Film Festival Rotterdam,[14] SXSW,[15] Animafest Zagreb, Portland International Film Festival,[16] Ottawa International Animation Festival, Annecy Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival, and Edinburgh International Film Festival. The awards for White's films include Best Short Film from the 1998 Stockholm International Film Festival (Dirt),[17] Best Animated Short from the 1991 Ann Arbor Film Festival (Choreography for Copy Machine), Grand Jury Award for Best Animated Short Film from the 2005 Florida Film Festival (Magda),[18] and the EMPA Work Life Award from the 2005 Ann Arbor Film Festival (Magda).

Through various film festivals, White's films have been screened at The Brooklyn Museum, The Smithsonian Museum,[19] The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston[20] and The High Museum in Atlanta. In 2012, Chel White presented a 20-year career retrospective at the Northwest Film Center (in the Portland Art Museum). Chel White is the recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation Media Arts Fellowship[21] through Re:New Media, a Media Arts Fellowship from the Regional Arts & Culture Council,[22] Portland Oregon, and project grants from Creative Capital, the Pacific Pioneer Fund and the Oregon Arts Commission.

Fever Dreams and Heavenly Nightmares, a DVD compilation of Chel White's short independent films was released in 2005, and is distributed by Microcinema International.[23]

Chel White's feature film directorial debut, Bucksville,[24] is a story about man who tries to leave a small town radical militia started by his father. Completed in 2012, the film stars Thomas Stroppel, Ted Rooney and Allen Nause, with a cameo role by Academy Award Nominated actor Tom Berenger, who is also an executive producer on the film.[25] The screenplay is written by Laura McGie[26] and Chel White, with music by Tom Brosseau. The film won Best Narrative Feature at the 2012 Kansas City Film Festival,[27] and Second Place for Narrative Feature Film Award from the 2012 Athens International Film Festival. Bucksville premiered in the 2012 BendFilm Festival,[28] and screened in the 2012 Brooklyn Film Festival,[29] the 2012 Ashland Independent Film Festival.[30] and the 2013 Berlin Independent Film Festival[31] Jamie S. Rich of The Oregonian calls Bucksville, “An insightful portrayal of an extreme point of view without the expected self-righteous critique.”[32]

Professional career

Chel White started his professional career working as an animator at Jim Blashfield and Associates, Portland, Oregon, in 1986. In 1991, he began creating visual effects for film director Gus Van Sant,[33] starting with My Own Private Idaho (1991). White was Visual Effects Supervisor on Van Sant's Even Cowgirls Get The Blues (1993), Paranoid Park (2007), First Kiss (2007), Milk (2008) and Restless (2011) as well as title effects supervisor on director Todd Haynes' film, I'm Not There.[34]

In the realm of television, White directed two shorts for NBC's Saturday Night Live for Robert Smigel's Saturday TV Funhouse, "The Narrator That Ruined Christmas" (season 27, episode 9)[35] and "Blue Christmas" (a.k.a. "Santa and the States")(season 30, episode 8).[33][36] Both are parodies of the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer television special (1964), produced by the Rankin/Bass productions company. Airing first on December 15, 2001, "The Narrator That Ruined Christmas" was written by Robert Smigel, Michael Gordon, Louis CK and Stephen Colbert, with the voices of SNL cast members Chris Parnell, Maya Rudolph, Amy Poehler, Doug Dale, and Robert Smigel.[36] Airing first on December 18, 2004, shortly after U.S. president George W. Bush's presidential re-election, "Blue Christmas" was written by Robert Smigel and Michelle Saks Smigel with additional material by Rich Blomquist, Stephen Colbert, Scott Jacobson, and Matt O'Brien, and voices by Maya Rudolph, Amy Poehler, Erik Bergmann, and Robert Smigel.[37] Chel White directed two stop motion animated children's television specials for Hallmark Channel. In reviewing the 2011 television holiday programs, Mike Hale of The New York Times called Jingle All the Way (TV special) "...by far the best of the bunch. In addition to its charming art and pleasantly low-key storytelling, 'Jingle' stands apart from the other holiday programs by not focusing on the manufacturing or delivery of toys." Hale also mentions, "For some honest emotion, and a combination of retro holiday spirit with adventurous animation, tune in for 'Jingle All the Way'...(it) looks like something you’d see at a European animation festival or late at night on Adult Swim, but it is also gentle and completely Hallmark-appropriate."[38]

In 2006 White directed the music video for Thom Yorke's song "Harrowdown Hill",[39] which won the award for Best Music Video at the 2007 SXSW Festival.[40] Along with his team and co-founders at Bent Image Lab, he pioneered the Smallgantics technique[41] technique that was used for the first time in the "Harrowdown Hill" video. In 2012, White directed a video for Chrysta Bell and David Lynch[42] to the song "Bird of Flames" from the album This Train. The video won the Audience Award for Best Experimental short at the 2012 Northwest Filmmakers' Festival.[43] In 2007, White's film Wind was commissioned by the climate change awareness organization Live Earth,[44] to be included in "Save Our Selves", a global concert and simulcast on July 7, 2007. Wind premiered April 26, 2007 in the opening night program of eight Live Earth short films, in the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival with keynote speaker Al Gore. The commercials Chel White has directed have been honored with Clio Awards,[45] a D&AD Award,[46] a The One Club Award,[47] two Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) Awards,[48][49] and two are included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His personal favorite ads he directed are for the Washington State Department of Health in a campaign of surreal anti-smoking ads aimed at children and teens.

As an actor, Chel White made his only appearance to date in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993), playing a brain surgeon in a scene with Uma Thurman.[50]

Personal life

In December 2005, Chel White and his then girlfriend Laura McGie were stranded in a mountain snowstorm for four days, in the Cascade Mountains, Oregon. They were found by Marion County, Oregon Search and Rescue officers who traveled to the remote location by snowmobile.[51] White and McGie are writing a feature film screenplay based on their shared experience, titled Stranded.

Since 1985, Chel White has made his home in Portland, Oregon.

Filmography

Feature films

Short films

Videography

Television

Commercials

See also

References

  1. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0924603/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
  2. ↑ http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2008/bent-image-lab/
  3. ↑ http://www.austinfilm.org/page.aspx?pid=3586
  4. ↑ http://www.chelwhite.com/pressbio/
  5. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0290990/
  6. ↑ http://www.mtv.com/videos/the-melvins/47052/hooch.jhtml
  7. ↑ https://www.orsymphony.org/news/0102/NE1.html
  8. ↑ http://www.austinchronicle.com/screens/2003-08-08/171978/
  9. ↑ http://nightflight.com/chel-whites-early-animated-films-machine-song-metal-dogs-of-india/
  10. ↑ http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-xerox-invented-the-copier-and-artists-pushed-it-too-its-limits
  11. ↑ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1991/08/30/movies/3910b217-e835-4373-8820-63aa76040e0c/
  12. ↑ http://history.sundance.org/people/1955
  13. ↑ http://www.berlinale.de/de/archiv/jahresarchive/1992/02_programm_1992/02_Filmdatenblatt_1992_19923179.php
  14. ↑ https://www.iffr.com/en/persons/chel-white/
  15. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2013-11-13. Retrieved 2013-11-24.
  16. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2016-01-25. Retrieved 2016-01-08.
  17. ↑ http://www.indiewire.com/article/swedens_twin_winter_festivals_shine_arctic_light_and_stockholm_internationa
  18. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443108/awards
  19. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2007-08-08. Retrieved 2009-06-24.
  20. ↑ http://www.theworldjournal.com/special/movies/2006/iffboston.htm
  21. ↑ http://mediaartists.org/content.php?sec=artist&sub=detail&artist_id=763
  22. ↑ https://racc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/ArtNotesJanFeb05.pdf
  23. ↑ http://www.sivideo.com/microcinema/
  24. ↑ http://www.bucksvillemovie.com/
  25. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000297/?ref_=tt_cl_t4
  26. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3759273/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cr26
  27. ↑ http://www.scene-stealers.com/blogs/kansas-city-filmfest-2012-day-4-recap-sundance-shorts-and-bucksville/
  28. ↑ http://www.bendbulletin.com/slideshows/1608638-151/bendfilm-festival-back-for-8th-year
  29. ↑ http://www.brooklynfilmfestival.org/films/detail.asp?fid=1215
  30. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2013-12-02. Retrieved 2013-11-19.
  31. ↑ http://www.berlinfest.com/festival-2/festival/festival-schedule-2013/
  32. ↑ http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bucksville/
  33. 1 2 http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0924603/
  34. ↑ http://creativity-online.com/?action=news:article&newsId=134690&sectionName=behind_the_work
  35. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0694826/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm
  36. 1 2 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0694826/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_11
  37. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0694905/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_11
  38. ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/24/arts/television/jingle-all-the-way-the-elf-on-the-shelf-and-more-christmas-cartoons-television-review.html?_r=0
  39. ↑ http://www.radiohead.fr/harrowdown-hill-3/
  40. ↑ http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/itty-billy-win-sxsw-jury-131975
  41. ↑ http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/04/entertainment/la-et-mn-tilt-shift-20120703
  42. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000186/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cr8
  43. ↑ http://eofilmfest.com/best-of-the-39th-northwest-filmmakers-festival/
  44. ↑ TRIBECA '07 DISPATCH | Tribeca Fest Thinks Globally With Gore and Climate Crisis in Opening Night Spotlight
  45. ↑ http://www.clioawards.com/archive/#200400182
  46. ↑ http://www.dandad.org/awards/professional/2001/tv-cinema-advertising-crafts/11778/peace-out/
  47. ↑ http://www.oneclub.org/awards/theoneshow/-award/8404/
  48. ↑ http://www.aicpshow.com/show/mash/
  49. ↑ http://www.aicpshow.com/show/santas-helper/
  50. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106834/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast
  51. ↑ http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=1437358
  52. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1544577/?ref_=nm_knf_i4
  53. ↑ http://www.chrystabell.com/music-videos/
  54. ↑ Harrowdown Hill
  55. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0873255/
  56. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TjF5KPyAvE
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