Q&A With Chelsea Director Kevin MacDonald

Oscar winner Kevin MacDonald sat down with Huffington Post to discuss his new film, Life in A Day, which opened in theaters July 29, 2011.

In the Q&A, MacDonald discusses his inspiration for the YouTube global film experiment and what he took away from the unique experience.  "I got [a] sense of this tremendous life force, that people -- even when they're in their last hours or days of life, confronting death -- they still have this sense of wanting to live, of life being special and wonderful," said MacDonald.

The rest of the interview can be found here.

Former Chelsea Intern Rahel Araya Awarded with GroupM Scholarship

Congratulations to former Chelsea intern Rahel Araya! GroupM North America has named Rahel and two other honorees in the GroupM Diversity Scholarship program it established with City College of New York as part of an ongoing effort to promote diversity and inclusion within the media and advertising industry.

Adage featured Rahel and the scholarship program on June 30.  Click here for the article.

Best of luck to Rahel in the coming semester!

GroupMNorth America's HR Director Tim Cecere (left) and CEO Rob Norman (center) join Salwa Sayed (second left), Rahel Araya and Cory Rainford, the first GroupM Scholars.

Five Times the Fun: Summer on the East Coast

Dan’s five things are less specific and more mood pieces, so enjoy the songs and pictures and combine them in your head for a vision of Dan’s summer plans.

Pietra:

Here's a collage of Pietra's picks:

Five Times the Fun: Summer on the East Coast

Chelsea folks are a fun bunch, that much is clear, but what do they do for fun? Particularly in summer, the funnest season of all? In the blazing sun or blasting AC, here’s a list of Chelsea staffers’ top five summer plans, starting with our New York office.

To start us off, here are Lisa's and Pat's lists! Stay tuned for more staff summer plans!

Lisa:

"Reading, reading, reading.  On my list are:

Alan Hollingsworth- The Strangers Child

Bruce Chatwin- Patagonia

The Long Goodbye- Megan O'Rourke

The Faith- Jennifer Haith

Tender Is The Night-  F Scott Fitzgerald

Harry Potter-- The First One (read with my kids)"

Pat:

 

CHELSEA DIRECTOR BRUCE HUNT AND RP& CREATE FORCEFUL ELEGANCE FOR ACURA

Chelsea director Bruce Hunt created four new television spots for Acura’s latest campaign: “Aggression in its Most Elegant Form.” Hunt’s work balances pristine visions of the vehicles with raw demonstrations of speed and power, creating an abstract and beautiful canvas to highlight Acura’s 2012 line-up.

In “German,” Hunt offers a clever play on the typical sports sedan commercial, using the traditional visual cues associated with German luxury cars, then revealing the Acura RDX compact SUV.  In “Meant,” we see an Acura TL sedan being taken through its paces while a list of its most sophisticated features is read in voiceover.  And in “Smart,” Hunt creates a slow burn, having us hear the smart features of the new Acura MDX, then abruptly demonstrating the one feature that can save a life.  “Truck” will be released in the coming weeks.

Hunt’s other recent work includes feature film 2nd Unit director duties, in particular on Guillermo del Toro’s Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, opening nationwide on August 26th, 2011. 

"Meant"


"German"

Chelsea's Michael Muller shoots "True Blood" for "Entertainment Weekly" Covers

Michael Muller shot three covers for Entertainment Weekly’s June feature on HBO’s True Blood, which premiered season 4 on June 26th.  The American Gothic inspired covers feature Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) posing with each of the men in her highly complicated love triangle: Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgard), Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), and Alcide Herveaux (Joe Manganiello).

Keep your eye out for upcoming EW issues with Michael’s other iconic painting inspired work featuring the True Blood actors.

 
 

Chelsea Discovers Best Way to Beat Summer Heat

Chelsea has been pondering ways to cool down from NYC’s sweaty subways and sweltering summer sun—without turning our offices into AC tundra.  The only possible answer is of course gelato.  Over the summer, Chelsea NY will explore downtown Manhattan's best gelato and rank them based on texture, packaging, and most importantly – taste!

Eager to start our adventure off right, we popped into two gelaterias this week: Il Laboratorio del gelato on Ludlow St and Grom on Bleeker St.  Our only two constant flavors are vanilla and pistachio.

Laboratorio gelato in their fantastic packaging.

                                    

Our intern, Evan, delivered bourbon pecan, pistachio, vanilla, espresso, and chocolate hazelnut in baby blue lunch box coolers. Very chic!

Kudos for Laboratorio for creative flavoring.  Everyone enjoyed the decadant bourbon pecan gelato.  The chocolate hazelnut was not that creamy and very thick, almost like a fudge. Unfortunately, the pistachio and espresso came prepacked instead of freshly scooped. This definitely took away from the gelato. The pistachio was weak and the espresso very grainy – almost like they used the beans and not the coffee.

Overall, we ranked Laboratorio a 6/7 out of 10 for creative flavoring and packaging.

 

Intern Sara Haile (left) and Staffer Pietra Impastato (right) show off Grom's gelato.

For our second gelateria, we chose more traditional gelato: nocciola, vanilla, chocolate, and tiramisu. Grom packages their gelato ecofriendly biodegradable bags. We love how green they are!

Grom’s gelato is so smooth and creamy. It was hard for us to pick a favorite flavor – they were all very delicious.

Our rank for Grom: solid 8.5 out of 10.

Director Colin O'Toole Joins Chelsea's Roster

Chelsea welcomes visual effects and documentary director Colin O'Toole to our roster.  Known for his high concept special effects and unvarnished real-life moments, O'Toole has created insightful work for clients such as Nike, Playstation, Alfa Romeo, Adidas, and Reebok.

The diversity of O’Toole’s commercial work is mirrored by the diversity of his larger body of work. Deeply involved in the music world, O’Toole has shot a number of music videos, particularly for cult musician Ian Brown and Polydor Records.  His love of music also lead to the creation of Let Us Be Golden, O’Toole’s documentary hit at this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival.  Moving from film to television, O’Toole was also co-director on the recent BBC 4 series Drivetime, and he won a D&AD award in 2009 for his PSA “Pick It Up,” for the Home Office Anti-Knife Crime campaign. 

Colin O'Toole Reel

Chelsea's Alex Gibney interviewed on NPR about his new documentary "Catching Hell", which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival, and will be screening at upcoming Silverdocs & Chicago International Film Festivals

In Game 6 of 2003's National League Championship Series, a Chicago Cubs fan reached for glory ... and caught hell.   In his new film , Oscar-winning Director Alex Gibney records the fallout of a fateful flub.  Along with half a dozen other Cubs fans, Steve Bartman stuck his hands out for a fly ball hit by Florida Marlin Luis Castillo just as Cubs outfielder Moises Alou also went after it. But Alou didn't quite make it. Instead, the ball glanced off Bartman's hand and into the crowd.

 

     

          Bartman reaches to catch the ball that will change his life forever. 
 

Gibney tells NPR's Neal Conan that Bartman was immediately singled out after the incident. "The entire stadium focused their ire on him and almost tried to kill him," Gibney says. When he saw just how furious everyone got over someone doing the most innocent thing a fan could do, Gibney says he knew there was a story there.

Superstition plays such a huge role in sports that Bartman's name is now inextricably connected to the Cubs' loss. But Gibney says there's also something darker going on.  "Very often, we look to find scapegoats," he says. "Bartman was a perfect scapegoat."  That day changed Bartman's life forever. 

Click here to listen to the rest of the June 22 NPR interview.

Neil Abramson heads north for Red Lobster

The "set"

Chelsea director Neil Abramson recently wrapped a new Red Lobster spot for Grey NY, and we had the pleasure of working a little outside of our usual turf, heading all the way up to Alaska for a scenic shoot. We thought we'd share a couple snaps of the gorgeous locations, not to mention the crew that made it possible. Thanks to the Grey team for a wonderful shoot.

The full team

New trailer: Alex Gibney's The Magic Trip

After a well-reviewed premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this past winter, Alex Gibney's documentary The Magic Trip is heading into wider release, and you can now check out the trailer, embedded above.

Along with co-director Alison Ellwood, Alex put together 16mm footage that author Ken Kesey and his Merry Band of Pranksters took on their road trip, famously chronicled by Tom Wolfe in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. The film includes rare footage of culture figures from Timothy Leary to The Grateful Dead, much of it never before seen by audiences. The Magic Trip will be available to view on demand in July, and will hit theaters in select cities this August.

Lauren Greenfield examines "Beauty Culture"

Lauren Greenfield's Girl Culture

More great news for Chelsea director Lauren Greenfield, who earlier this month was honored by the Art Directors Club and the Webby's: her photography and a short documentary film are being shown in the new "Beauty Culture" exhibit which opened this weekend at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles.

In addition to snapshots from some of Lauren's most well-known projects including Girl Culture, she was commissioned to shoot a 30-minute documentary for the exhibition that the New York Times called "one of the show's highlights." The film plays every hour at the exhibit and includes footage that ranges from toddler beauty pageants to female body builders, interviews with photographers featured in the show as well as a Harvard Medical School professor, as well as models, actresses including Jamie Lee Curtis.

"The whole point of [the exhibit] from my approach is deconstructing the world we live in and understanding what's behind these pictures in the magazines — understanding what we're seeing," Lauren told the LA Times. "We are so influenced by these things and most of the time we don't question them. It's [as common] as the air we breathe."

We couldn't be more excited for Lauren, who was honored at the opening gala on Friday. The exhibit opened to the public on Saturday and will run through November 27. For those of you who will be in L.A. soon, we hope you get the chance to stop by, and if not you can check out Lauren's reel over at the Chelsea website.

On set with Charles Mehling and Olay

Last week was a fun one here in the NYC Chelsea offices, with Charles Mehling in town from Paris shooting his third Olay spot for Saatchi & Saatchi NY. Courtesy of EP Pat McGoldrick, here's a behind-the-scenes shot from Friday's shoot, featuring Charles (center) first AC Pete Morello (right), and model and Olay spokeswoman Emily Caillon (background). Thanks to Emily and the Saatchi team for a fantastic shoot, and stay tuned for the final product.

Watch: Johan Kramer's Bye Bye Super 8 in full

As we mentioned before, Johan Kramer's touching short film Bye Bye Super 8 - a tribute to the Super 8 film he grew up using - premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last week. You can now watch the full short online - take a look above, and enjoy.

Lauren Greenfield honored by Art Directors Club and the Webby's

Lauren Greenfield's stunning film and fashion photography for New York Magazine has received honors from both the Art Director's Club and the Webby's.

Last year Lauren was invited to be New York Magazine's featured photographer for the Spring Fashion Issue, and shot during fashion week in New York, Paris, and Milan. The resulting portfolio, a mix of gripping behind-the-scenes and runway shots, was used for both an 11-page featured spread in the magazine and a short film for the website. The photos are now set to receive a Gold Cube for Magazine Editorial photography at the upcoming Art Directors Club awards in New York, and the film will be an Official Honoree at this year's Webby's.

Needless to say we're all very excited for Lauren and "Fashion Show" - check out the film above and see more of her work at the Chelsea website.