Chel White
Encyclopedia
Chel White is an American film director
, commercial
and music video director
, animator
, actor
, screenwriter
, and visual effects supervisor
on feature films.
He is co-founder of the international production company http://bentimagelab.com/Bent Image Lab
] 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. His narrative films are often told from the perspective of the estranged individual; the outsider looking in http://www.skysociety.com/bio.html. He has made three films based on the work of Peabody Award
winning radio
personality and writer Joe Frank
(Dirt, Soulmate, and Magda).
Chel White is the recipient of a Rockefeller/Ford Foundation Media Arts Fellowship through Re:New Media, a Media Arts Fellowship from the Regional Arts and Culture Council, Portland Oregon, and project grants from Creative Capital, the Pacific Pioneer Fund and the Oregon Arts Commission.
The short films of Chel White have been shown in major film festivals throughout the world including the Sundance Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival
, SXSW Festival, Zagreb Animation Festival, Portland International Film Festival, Ottawa Animation Festival, Annecy Animation Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival, and Edinburgh International Film Festival
.
The awards received 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, his films have been screened at The Brooklyn Museum, The Smithsonian Museum, The Boston Museum of Fine Arts and The High Museum in Atlanta.
Since 1985, Chel White has made his home in Portland, Oregon
.
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), and Milk (2008), as well as title effects supervisor on director
Todd Haynes' film, I'm Not There.
White directed two shorts for Saturday Night Live
's "TV Funhouse
," The Narrator That Ruined Christmas (2001) and Santa and the States (2004), both parodies of the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
television special (1964).
"Fever Dreams and Heavenly Nightmares," a DVD compilation of Chel White's short films was released in 2005, and is distributed by Microcinema International.
In 2006 White directed the music video for Thom Yorke
's song "Harrowdown Hill
," which won the award for Best Music Video at the 2006 SXSW Festival. Along with his team and co-founders at Bent Image Lab, he pioneered the Smallgantics technique that was used for the first time in the "Harrowdown Hill" video.
The commercials Chel White has directed have been honored with Clio Awards
, AICP Awards, Mobius Advertising Awards, a Rosey, and several awards from the Chicago International Television Awards. Two commercials are included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
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
,
In December 2005, Chel White and his then girlfriend Laura McGie were stranded in a mountain snowstorm for four days, Cascade Mountains, Oregon. They were found by Marion County Search and Rescue officers who traveled to the remote location by snowmobile. White and McGie are currently writing a feature film screenplay based on their shared experience, titled 96 Hours. White and McGie are currently in post-production on a feature film titled Bucksville.
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
.
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
, commercial
Television advertisement
A television advertisement or television commercial, often just commercial, advert, ad, or ad-film – is a span of television programming produced and paid for by an organization that conveys a message, typically one intended to market a product...
and music video director
Music video director
A music video director is driven by a given music track. These are called music videos and are then used as promotional tools for popular music singles...
, animator
Animator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...
, actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
, screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
, and visual effects supervisor
Visual effects supervisor
In the context of film and television production, a visual effects supervisor is responsible for achieving the creative aims of the director and/or producers through the use of visual effects...
on feature films.
He is co-founder of the international production company http://bentimagelab.com/Bent Image Lab
Bent Image Lab
BENT IMAGE LAB is a production company and animation studio specializing in commercials, music videos, short films, and visual effects for feature films. Located in Portland, Oregon the company was founded in 2002 by partners David Daniels, Ray Di Carlo, and Chel White...
] in Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
, along with co-founders Ray Di Carlo
Ray Di Carlo
Ray Di Carlo is an American producer, director, and co-founder of the Portland, Oregon based animation studio Bent Image Lab.-History:Since 2002, Di Carlo has acted as Executive Producer at Bent Image Lab...
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. His narrative films are often told from the perspective of the estranged individual; the outsider looking in http://www.skysociety.com/bio.html. He has made three films based on the work of Peabody Award
Peabody Award
The George Foster Peabody Awards recognize distinguished and meritorious public service by radio and television stations, networks, producing organizations and individuals. In 1939, the National Association of Broadcasters formed a committee to recognize outstanding achievement in radio broadcasting...
winning radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
personality and writer Joe Frank
Joe Frank
Joe Frank is an American radio personality, known best for his often philosophical, humorous, surrealist, and sometimes absurd monologues and radio dramas.-Early life:...
(Dirt, Soulmate, and Magda).
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 received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Visual Arts, with a central focus on experimental film, from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. After college he began making independent short films, starting with Metal Dogs of India (1985). The films that followed were Machine Song (1987), Choreography for Copy Machine (or Photocopy Cha Cha)(1991), Dirt (1998), Soulmate (2000), Passage (2001), Magda (2004) A Painful Glimpse Into My Writing Process in Less Than 60 Seconds (2005), and Wind (2007).Chel White is the recipient of a Rockefeller/Ford Foundation Media Arts Fellowship through Re:New Media, a Media Arts Fellowship from the Regional Arts and Culture Council, Portland Oregon, and project grants from Creative Capital, the Pacific Pioneer Fund and the Oregon Arts Commission.
The short films of Chel White have been shown in major film festivals throughout the world including the Sundance Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival
Seattle International Film Festival
The Seattle International Film Festival , held annually in Seattle, Washington since 1976, is among the top film festivals in North America. Audiences have grown steadily; the 2006 festival had 160,000 attendees...
, SXSW Festival, Zagreb Animation Festival, Portland International Film Festival, Ottawa Animation Festival, Annecy Animation Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival, and Edinburgh International Film Festival
Edinburgh International Film Festival
The Edinburgh International Film Festival is an annual fortnight of cinema screenings and related events taking place each June. Established in 1947, it is the world's oldest continually running film festival...
.
The awards received 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
Ann Arbor Film Festival
The Ann Arbor Film Festival is an annual film festival held in Ann Arbor in the U.S. state of Michigan. Established in 1963, it is the third-oldest film festival in North America ; and the oldest experimental 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, his films have been screened at The Brooklyn Museum, The Smithsonian Museum, The Boston Museum of Fine Arts and The High Museum in Atlanta.
Since 1985, Chel White has made his home in Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
.
Professional career
Chel White started his professional career working as an animatorAnimator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...
at Jim Blashfield
Jim Blashfield
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, "Weird Al"...
and Associates, Portland, Oregon, in 1986. In 1991, he began creating visual effects for film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
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), and Milk (2008), as well as title effects supervisor on director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
Todd Haynes' film, I'm Not There.
White directed two shorts for Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
's "TV Funhouse
TV Funhouse
Saturday TV Funhouse is the title of a recurring skit on NBC's Saturday Night Live featuring cartoons created by longtime SNL writer Robert Smigel as well as a short-lived spinoff series TV Funhouse that ran on Comedy Central...
," The Narrator That Ruined Christmas (2001) and Santa and the States (2004), both parodies of the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer is a fictional reindeer with a glowing red nose. He is popularly known as "Santa's 9th Reindeer" and, when depicted, is the lead reindeer pulling Santa's sleigh on Christmas Eve. The luminosity of his nose is so great that it illuminates the team's path through...
television special (1964).
"Fever Dreams and Heavenly Nightmares," a DVD compilation of Chel White's short films was released in 2005, and is distributed by Microcinema International.
In 2006 White directed the music video for Thom Yorke
Thom Yorke
Thomas "Thom" Edward Yorke is an English musician who is the lead vocalist and principal songwriter for Radiohead. He mainly plays guitar and piano, but he has also played drums and bass guitar...
's song "Harrowdown Hill
Harrowdown Hill
"Harrowdown Hill" is a song by Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke and is the eighth track on his 2006 album The Eraser. The song was also released as a limited edition single in the United Kingdom on 21 August 2006, peaking at #23 in the UK Singles Chart...
," which won the award for Best Music Video at the 2006 SXSW Festival. Along with his team and co-founders at Bent Image Lab, he pioneered the Smallgantics technique that was used for the first time in the "Harrowdown Hill" video.
The commercials Chel White has directed have been honored with Clio Awards
Clio Awards
The Clio Awards are annual awards bestowed to reward innovation and creative excellence in advertising, design and communication. The categories include work in nearly all types of media, and the judges are advertising professionals from around the world....
, AICP Awards, Mobius Advertising Awards, a Rosey, and several awards from the Chicago International Television Awards. Two commercials are included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
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
Tribeca Film Festival
The Tribeca Film Festival is a film festival founded in 2002 by Jane Rosenthal, Robert De Niro and Craig Hatkoff in a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the consequent loss of vitality in the TriBeCa neighborhood in Lower Manhattan.The mission of the festival...
with keynote speaker Al Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....
,
In December 2005, Chel White and his then girlfriend Laura McGie were stranded in a mountain snowstorm for four days, Cascade Mountains, Oregon. They were found by Marion County Search and Rescue officers who traveled to the remote location by snowmobile. White and McGie are currently writing a feature film screenplay based on their shared experience, titled 96 Hours. White and McGie are currently in post-production on a feature film titled Bucksville.
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
Uma Thurman
Uma Karuna Thurman is an American actress and model. She has performed in leading roles in a variety of films, ranging from romantic comedies and dramas to science fiction and action movies. Among her best-known roles are those in the Quentin Tarantino films Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill...
.
Short films
- Wind (2007)
- A Painful Glimpse Into My Writing Process in Less Than 60 Seconds (2005)
- Magda (2004)
- Eclipse (2003)
- Passage (2001)
- Soulmate (2000)
- Swingin' With Mr. String (1998)
- Fish Bubbles (1998)
- Dirt (1998)
- Choreography for Copy Machine (or Photocopy Cha Cha) (1991)
- Machine Song (1987)
- Metal Dogs of India (1985)
Videography
- Thom YorkeThom YorkeThomas "Thom" Edward Yorke is an English musician who is the lead vocalist and principal songwriter for Radiohead. He mainly plays guitar and piano, but he has also played drums and bass guitar...
- Harrowdown Hill (2006) - Cottonmouth, Texas - Hoops, Ugly People, Me and My Last 4 Bucks (1997)
- Season to Risk - Blood Ugly (1994)
- Melvins - Hooch (1993)
Commercials
- LuxLuxThe lux is the SI unit of illuminance and luminous emittance, measuring luminous flux per unit area. It is used in photometry as a measure of the intensity, as perceived by the human eye, of light that hits or passes through a surface...
- Provocateur (2006) - Washington State Department of Health - Park and Rec Room (2005)
- OfficeMaxOfficeMaxOfficeMax , is an American office supplies retailer that was founded in 1988 and is headquartered in Naperville, Illinois.-History:On April 1, 1988, OfficeMax was founded in Cleveland, Ohio, by Bob Hurwitz and Michael Feuer. Hurwitz served as executive chairman and chief executive officer and Feuer...
- Santa's Helper (2005) - Tele-TVTELE-TVTELE TV was a media and technology company formed by Bell Atlantic, NYNEX, Pacific Telesis, and Creative Artists Agency in February 1995. The company, based in Reston, Virginia, USA, set out to design a pioneering Interactive TV service with a set-top box that would allow customers to view video on...
- Critics (1997) - FilaFilaFila or FILA may refer to:*Fila , a South Korean sportswear manufacturer* Fila , an island of Vanuatu*Fila, Iran, a village in Lorestan Province...
- Mashburn (1994)
See also
- Jan ŠvankmajerJan ŠvankmajerJan Švankmajer is a Czech filmmaker and artist whose work spans several media. He is a self-labeled surrealist known for his surreal animations and features, which have greatly influenced other artists such as Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, the Brothers Quay, and many others.- Life and career :Jan...
- Ladislas StarevichLadislas StarevichVladislav Starevich , born Władysław Starewicz , was a Russian and French stop-motion animator who used insects and other animals as his protagonists...
- Ray HarryhausenRay HarryhausenRay Harryhausen is an American film producer and special effects creator...
- Jiří BartaJirí BartaJiří Barta is a Czech stop-motion animation director. His films, many of which used the medium of wood for animation, garnered critical acclaim and won many awards, but after the fall of the communist government in Czechoslovakia he was unable to release anything for about 15 years...
- Brothers QuayBrothers QuayStephen and Timothy Quay are American identical twin brothers better known as the Brothers Quay or Quay Brothers. They are influential stop-motion animators...
- Christiane CegavskeChristiane CegavskeChristiane Cegavske is an American artist and stop motion animator.She is primarily known for her animated film Blood Tea and Red String and for having done the animated segments to the movie The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things...