Chel White (born May 30, 1959) is an Americanfilm director, composer, screenwriter and visual effects artist. In his independent films and music videos, White is known for his stylized, often experimental use of images, unusual animation and narratives depicting an outsider's perspective. He often adopts darkly humorous and poetic sensibilities to explore topics of love, obsession and alienation; with dreams and the subconscious being his greatest influences.[1] He describes his own work as “stories and images that reside on the brink of dreams, or linger on the periphery of distorted memories.”[2] A Rockefeller Fellow, Chel White has made three films based on the work of Peabody Award-winning writer and radio personality Joe Frank (Dirt, Soulmate, Magda ).[3]
Chale Nafus of the Austin Film Society says, "I have been amazed at the stylistic and thematic diversity in (Chel White’s) films. Surreal, ethereal, wistful, and witty, I just allow my imagination to be taken into his complex, mysterious worlds.”[4] 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."[5]
Chel White began making independent short films after college, starting with a drawn-on-film animation titled Metal Dogs of India (1985).[12] 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.[15] The film is widely considered the first noteworthy animated film using this technique.[16]The Washington Post describes it as “(a) musical frolic which wittily builds on ghostly, distorted images crossing the plate glass of a copier.”[17] The films that followed include Dirt (1998), Soulmate (2000), Passage (2001), Magda (2004), A Painful Glimpse Into My Writing Process in Less Than 60 Seconds (2005), Wind (2007), the feature film Bucksville (2011), the Donald Trump horror parody Little Donnie (2017), and Dreams of a Fallen Astronaut (2020) part of the Gratzfilm omnibus The One Minute Memoir.[18]
In 2002, as a poetic response to the tragedies of September 11, Chel White created New York to be part of the omnibus collection Underground Zero. The Chicago Tribune called White's film "an eerie paean to the city itself,"[19] and Bill Stamets of the Chicago Reader said, “Chel White’s New York makes a ruined city enchanted again: jets ascend in twilight, framed by silhouetted rooftops and cranes, and droplets sparkle like tiny diamonds as kids delight in the spray of fire hydrants."[20]
White's 2007 short film, Wind, was commissioned by Radiohead’s creative director Dilly Gent and the climate change awareness group Live Earth. The New York Times Magazine describes it as “(a) beautiful film, very moving, set to a poem by Antonio Machado and narrated by Alec Baldwin.”[21] Using a Robert Bly translation of the poem, Wind creates a metaphor for humanity's lack of planet stewardship. Along with eight other Live Earth commissioned films, "Wind" made its world premiere in the opening night program of the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival with keynote speaker Al Gore.[22]
White directed two shorts for NBC's Saturday Night Live and Robert Smigel'sSaturday TV Funhouse, The Narrator That Ruined Christmas (season 27, episode 9)[42] and Blue Christmas (season 30, episode 8).[43] Both are parodies of the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer television special (1964). 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 Chris Parnell, Maya Rudolph, Amy Poehler, Doug Dale, and Robert Smigel.[43] Airing first on December 18, 2004, 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. The success of the SNL shorts led to other holiday themed stop motion projects that White would direct through Bent Image Lab, including two 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."[44]
In 2006, Chel White directed the music video for Thom Yorke's song Harrowdown Hill (Best Music Video, 2007 SXSW).[45] Along with his team and co-founders at Bent Image Lab, he pioneered Smallgantics, a digital miniaturizing technique first used in the Harrowdown Hill video.[46] In 2012, White directed the video for the Chrysta Bell & David Lynch song Bird of Flames, which has been described as "a haunting and surreal vision."[47]
2006: The AICP Show at MoMA, Office Max Santa's Helper, included in The Art and Technique of the American Television Commercial,[52] permanent collection, Museum of Modern Art New York.
2006: Bend Film Festival, Best Short Film, A Painful Glimpse Into My Writing Process (In Less Than 60 Seconds)[82]
1994: The AICP Show at MoMA, Fila Mash, included in the program The Art and Technique of the American Television Commercial,[51] permanent collection, Museum of Modern Art New York.
Gus Green Van Sant Jr. is an American filmmaker, photographer, painter, and musician who has earned acclaim as an independent filmmaker. His films typically deal with themes of marginalized subcultures.
Xerox art is an art form that began in the 1960s. Prints are created by putting objects on the glass, or platen, of a photocopier and by pressing "start" to produce an image. If the object is not flat, or the cover does not totally cover the object, or the object is moved, the resulting image is distorted in some way. The curvature of the object, the amount of light that reaches the image surface, and the distance of the cover from the glass, all affect the final image. Often, with proper manipulation, rather ghostly images can be made. Basic techniques include: Direct Imaging, the copying of items placed on the platen ; Still Life Collage, a variation of direct imaging with items placed on the platen in a collage format focused on what is in the foreground/background; Overprinting, the technique of constructing layers of information, one over the previous, by printing onto the same sheet of paper more than once; Copy Overlay, a technique of working with or interfering in the color separation mechanism of a color copier; Colorizing, vary color density and hue by adjusting the exposure and color balance controls; Degeneration is a copy of a copy degrading the image as successive copies are made; Copy Motion, the creation of effects by moving an item or image on the platen during the scanning process. Each machine also creates different effects.
William Gale Vinton was an American animator and filmmaker. Vinton was best known for his Claymation work, alongside creating iconic characters such as The California Raisins. He won an Oscar for his work alongside several Emmy Awards and Clio Awards for his studio's work.
"Harrowdown Hill" is a song by the English musician Thom Yorke, released on 21 August 2006 as the first single from his first solo album, The Eraser. Yorke wrote it about the death of David Kelly, a British weapons expert who told a reporter that the British government had falsely identified weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. "Harrowdown Hill" reached number 23 on the UK singles chart. A music video was released in July 2006.
Jim Blashfield is an American filmmaker and media artist, best known for his short films such as Suspicious Circumstances and The Mid-Torso of Inez, and his music videos for musicians Talking Heads, Joni Mitchell, Nu Shooz, Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, Michael Jackson, Tears for Fears, Marc Cohn, and "Weird Al" Yankovic. He has collaborated with Bill Frisell and the Oregon Symphony.
Joanna Priestley is an American contemporary film director, producer, animator and teacher. Her films are in the collections of the Academy Film Archive in Los Angeles and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Priestley has had retrospectives at the British Film Institute, Museum of Modern Art and Hiroshima International Animation Festival in Japan. Bill Plympton calls her the "Queen of independent animation". Priestley lives and works in Portland, Oregon.
J. J. Sedelmaier is an American animator, illustrator, designer, author and film director/producer, known for co-creating the "Saturday TV Funhouse" segment—including The Ambiguously Gay Duo and The X-Presidents—on the TV series Saturday Night Live; as well as the Tek Jansen series on The Colbert Report, the interstitial cartoons seen in the USA TV series Psych, and over 500 other TV and advertising projects.
Rose Bond is a Canadian-born media artist, animator and professor who currently lives and works in Portland, Oregon. She has been considered a scholar on the subject of animation and an experienced animator herself. Bond's animations and short films have been shown at film festivals including the Sundance Film Festival. Bond is also known for her architectural animation installations. She shown work at Exeter Castle in 2010 and created a prototype animation for the Smithsonian. Bond's hand-painted films are held in the film collection at the Museum of Modern Art.
BENT IMAGE LAB is a production company and animation studio specializing in story development, television, commercials, visual effects, music videos, short films, experimental techniques and tech development in augmented reality (AR). Located in Portland, Oregon, the company was founded in 2002 by partners David Daniels, Ray Di Carlo, and Chel White.
David Daniels is an American commercial director, filmmaker, and co-founder of the Portland, Oregon based animation studio Bent Image Lab.
Rob Shaw is an American film director, television director, commercial and music video director, and animator. He is a graduate of University of the Arts (Philadelphia).
Paul Harrod is an American animation director, production designer, and art director with a special emphasis on stop motion.
When the Day Breaks is a Canadian animated short co-directed by Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis and featuring the voice of Canadian singer-songwriter Martha Wainwright singing the titular song.
Pro and Con is a 1993 9-minute 16mm short animated film produced, directed and animated by Joanna Priestley and Joan C. Gratz using drawings on paper, pixillated hands and object animation. The "Pro" section of the film was written by Barbara Carnegie and Joanna Priestley and narrated by Lt. Janice Inman. The "Con" section was written by Jeff Green and narrated by Allen Nause. The sound was designed and produced by Lance Limbocker and Chel White with music by Chel White. Pro and Con was commissioned through the Metropolitan Arts Commission's Percent for Art Program in Multnomah County, Oregon.
Jingle All the Way is a 2011 American stop motion animated children's television special produced for Hallmark Channel, directed by Chel White and produced at Bent Image Lab. The show is inspired by Hallmark Cards' 2010 stuffed toy Jingle the Husky Pup and its accompanying interactive storybook, Jingle All the Way. The special premiered on the Hallmark Channel on November 25, 2011.
Choreography for Copy Machine (Photocopy Cha Cha) is a four-minute experimental animation film by independent filmmaker Chel White.
Revengeance is an American adult animated action black comedy film directed by Bill Plympton and Jim Lujan. Lujan also wrote, composed, and voiced several characters in the film. Plympton single-handedly animated the entire film by pencil on paper, which was digitally reworked and colored by his staff.
The Rubber Stamp Film is a 1983 7 minute 16mm short animated film by Joanna Priestley, using rubber stamped images and drawings on paper. The film was directed, produced, and animated by Priestley with sound designed and produced by R. Dennis Wiancko.
Joan Carol Gratz is an American artist, animator, and filmmaker who specializes in clay painting. Gratz is best known for her 1992 Oscar-winning animated short film Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase.
Magda is a 2004 stop motion animated short film by independent filmmaker Chel White, from a story written and read by monologist Joe Frank.
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