Education Antioch University Years active 1985-present | Name Chel White Role Film director | |
Movies Bucksville, Jingle All the Way Similar People David Daniels, Thomas Stroppel, Joe Frank, Tom Brosseau, A D Miles | ||
the beats the bomb the 1950s 6 minute trailer directed by chel white
Chel White is an American film director, commercial and music video director, composer, actor, screenwriter, and visual effects supervisor on feature films. He is co-founder of the international production company Bent Image Lab in Portland, Oregon, along with co-founders Ray Di Carlo and David Daniels.
Contents
- the beats the bomb the 1950s 6 minute trailer directed by chel white
- Chel White The Wind
- Biography
- Independent Filmmaker
- Professional career
- Personal life
- Feature films
- Short films
- Videography
- Television
- Commercials
- References
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. His narrative films are often told from the perspective of the estranged individual; the outsider looking in. He has made three films based on the work of Peabody Award winning radio personality and writer Joe Frank (Dirt, Soulmate, and Magda). White has directed music videos for Radiohead's lead singer Thom Yorke, The Melvins, Tom Brosseau, Chrysta Bell & David Lynch, and collaborated with the Oregon Symphony. 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."
Chel White: The Wind
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. 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. The Washington Post describes it as “(a) musical frolic which wittily builds on ghostly, distorted images crossing the plate glass of a copier.” 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, Berlin Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, SXSW, Animafest Zagreb, Portland International Film Festival, 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), 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), 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, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 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 through Re:New Media, a Media Arts Fellowship from the Regional Arts & Culture Council, 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.
Chel White's feature film directorial debut, Bucksville, 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. The screenplay is written by Laura McGie and Chel White, with music by Tom Brosseau. The film won Best Narrative Feature at the 2012 Kansas City Film Festival, and Second Place for Narrative Feature Film Award from the 2012 Athens International Film Festival. Bucksville premiered in the 2012 BendFilm Festival, and screened in the 2012 Brooklyn Film Festival, the 2012 Ashland Independent Film Festival. and the 2013 Berlin Independent Film Festival Jamie S. Rich of The Oregonian calls Bucksville, “An insightful portrayal of an extreme point of view without the expected self-righteous critique.”
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, 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.
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) and "Blue Christmas" (a.k.a. "Santa and the States")(season 30, episode 8). 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. 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. 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."
In 2006 White directed the music video for Thom Yorke's song "Harrowdown Hill", which won the award for Best Music Video at the 2007 SXSW Festival. Along with his team and co-founders at Bent Image Lab, he pioneered the Smallgantics technique 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 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. In 2007, White's film Wind was commissioned by the climate change awareness organization Live Earth, 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, a D&AD Award, a The One Club Award, two Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) Awards, 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.
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. 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.