Northwest Film Forum

 Austin based filmmaker Bradley Beesley has made a cinematic career documenting oddball Americana, strange sub-cultures and homegrown rock stars. Post art school and somewhat damaged, he began drinking moonshine and filming with legendary bluesman R.L. Burnside to make his first movie ‘Hill Stomp Hollar’ (SXSW). He has since directed 9 feature-length films, including 7 documentaries, a concert film and a sci-fi narrative. Bradley is the producer and director of the backwoods cult classic Okie Noodling (PBS). The film chronicles the lost art of bare-handed catfishing in his home state of Oklahoma and continues to have encore broadcasts nationwide.

 Dan Thornton has been a digital media creator and educator in the Seattle area for a decade.  Before that he was a producer/editor in the Baltimore/Washington DC area.

 Dickey Nesenger began her work in the film business in 1973 as a documentary and commercial film editor in New York. After moving to Los Angeles in 1978, she began a 17 year career as a script supervisor, working in television, on feature films, commercials and music videos. Also a screenwriter, she sold her film Commercial to Lighthouse Productions in Los Angeles. As a playwright, her plays have been staged at The Producer’s Club, Looking Glass and American Globe Theatres in New York, The Met and City Theatres in Los Angeles, New Jersey Repertory, Minneapolis Playwrights’ Center, Boston’s Theatre Works, and throughout Washington State. She holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing through Goddard College, and teaches play and screenwriting at Antioch University in Seattle. Her short play, Montana Moon, produced last year at New Jersey Repertory, has been optioned for a short film to be produced by the theatre.

 Wynne Greenwood works with video, performance, music, object, role and relationship. Her work has been included in performances and exhibitions at independent and institutional spaces internationally, including the Tate Modern, the Whitney Biennial, the Frye Art Museum, The Kitchen and On the Boards. Greenwood teaches performance and video at Seattle University and outside of institutions through workshops and after-school programs.

Tyler Jacobsen a conceptual computer artist, who aesthetically combines the antiquated and the ultra-modern to create a practice that integrates experimental video, performance, and interative arts programming with social commentary, tactical media, and networked interventionism. He received his BFA in Video Art from the University of Texas at Austin in 1999, and was awarded a fellowship from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to earn an MFA in Electronic Art in 2003. He as been a professor for Interactive Media at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY, and an Adjunct Professor for Design and Technology at Parsons the New School for Design.

Jacobsen's work has been exhibited in galleries, museums, and festivals around the world such as Next 5 Minutes in Amsterdam, Transmediale in Berlin, The Institute of Contemporary Art in London, Mass MoCA, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Centraal Museum Utrecht, and the Museum of Vojvodina in Novi Sad, Serbia, and has received grants, Residencies and commissions from Franklin Furnace, the New York State Council for the Arts, Rhizome.org/The New Museum, Eyebeam, and the FACT Centre, UK, and been published by Autonomedia in their Data Browser series for his work exploring resistant strategies using networked technologies. He currently works as Art Director for the Seattle-based record label, Medical Records, LLC and lives in Seattle.

 Cory Kelley is an Emmy-nominated director with a passion for storytelling. Cory freelances as a motion graphics artist and editor.  He has a degree in Motion Picture/Video Production from Montana State with photography and graphic design training.  Since leaving his job as an Associate Creative Director in Seattle, he has taken on filmmaking fulltime with two feature-length documentaries and several short films.  To see more of Cory's work visit www.corykelleycreative.com

 Dan's love and appreciation for wilderness started in the mountains of Colorado. He studied Visual Communications at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Dan is principal of Rollingbay Works, a digital media firm located on Bainbridge Island, Washington. He spends every summer in Alaska as a wilderness guide, filmmaker and commercial halibut fisherman.

Bernard Mann is an Apple Certified Pro in Final Cut Pro X, the paradigm-shifting new editing software by Apple.  He is also certified in Final Cut Pro 7, trained by the Weynand Training company that wrote Apple’s official training book for FCP 7 and FCP X.  He’s been an Apple user since the early days of video on computers (do you remember the Radius Videovision card?), and loves to be able to share his knowledge of Apple's video editing software.  He graduated from NYU, majoring in TV/Film.  He loves photography, still or motion, documenting photographers, surfing and especially musical concerts.

 Joe Swanberg (b. 1981) has directed the features KISSING ON THE MOUTH (2005), LOL (2006), HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS (2007), NIGHTS AND WEEKENDS (2008), ALEXANDER THE LAST (2009) and UNCLE KENT (2011). His films have premiered at the Sundance, Berlin and SXSW film festivals. He created the series BUTTERKNIFE for Spout.com and also directs and stars in the web series YOUNG AMERICAN BODIES, which he produces with his wife, Kris. YOUNG AMERICAN BODIES can be viewed for free on Nerve.com and IFC.com. Swanberg studied film production at Southern Illinois University where he developed an interest in emerging video technology and a crippling addiction to the internet. Most of Joe’s films can be viewed on www.sundancenow.com.  

Jennifer Roth is a 20 year veteran of the film industry. She was recently the executive producer of Darren Aronofsky's filmBlack Swan which stars Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel and Mila Kunis. In 2008 she was the executive/line producer on the Darren Aronofsky film The Wrestler starring Mickey Rourke which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Her other producer credits include  World’s Greatest Dad, Smart People and The Squid and the Whale. Her early production credits include Bad Lieutenant, Smoke, The Crow and Deadman. Ms. Roth is also the current board president of the Northwest Film Forum.
 

In addition to animated shorts and commercial work, Britta Johnson has made music videos and projections for artists including Andrew Bird, Minus the Bear, Laura Veirs, and Robin Holcomb.  Recently, she animated films for 12 songs about insects by Mirah and Spectratone International for the live show “Share This Place," which just completed an east coast tour.   

Cheryll Hidalgo is a 10 year veteran of teaching youth media in Seattle.  Currently the director of the award winning film/video program at Seattle Academy, Cheryll has also conducted many workshops engaging youth in both traditional and experimental genres of film/video production, including documentary film, narrative film, animation, and experimental direct-to-film techniques.  In 2007, Cheryll was the art director for “Constructing Childhood”, a grant funded, video installation project at the UW.  In a computer controlled performance cycle, youth-made soundscapes, lightscapes, and films, were combined with sculpture, drawing, photography, poetry, and spoken word to describe how teens experience the joys and pressures of growing up in the 21st century.
 

Christopher Julian is a freelance video editor, cinematographer and camera operator, and has been in Seattle since 2008. He also teaches video editing at the Art Institute of Seattle. His main skills include digital video editing in Avid, Premiere, and Final Cut Pro platforms, as well as digital photography, digital audio editing, web design and a variety of other technical skills. While shooting and editing for other productions, he pursues projects of his own, most notably the full-length film Invisible Ink, and Scapegoat: The Passion of Judas Iscariot, in pre-production now. He is also a musician and singer/songwriter as well as painter, sculptor, woodworker, and an avid swimmer. www.christopherjulian.com

Bob Cumbow is a lawyer and a writer. He has been writing about film for close to 40 years, and much of his work, new and old, can be found on the Parallax View blog at http://parallax-view.org/. He's also written book-length studies of the films of Sergio Leone and the films of John Carpenter. His law practice focuses on trademark, copyright, advertising, publishing, arts and entertainment, and several locally-made independent films credit his as legal advisor. He practices fulltime with the Seattle firm of Graham & Dunn, and also teaches Trademark Law and Advertising Law at Seattle University School of Law. In addition to his law degree, Mr. Cumbow holds a BA and an MA in English from SU. 

Erik Viliniskas has honed his production skills on corporate and promotional videos, documentary projects, and independent films sets. An A/V geek since high school and a graduate of the University of Washington, Erik has also pursued a continued study of filmmaking and advanced production techniques at NWFF and 911 Media Arts Center. His work in the film industry began as actor and he has appeared in television commercials, corporate videos and indie films. You may have even seen him on a few episodes of “Bill Ny the Science Guy.”
 

Dave Hanagan is a Seattle filmmaker and the current Studio Director of the Northwest Film Forum. He has many years of filmmaking experience. You may have seen his most popular work on ABC's Reality TV, hip-hop public access shows in Atlanta, Georgia, or downloaded from the internet.

Bryan Schaeffer is the owner of Design Revelations, a conceptually driven graphic design company that provides services in print, web, illustration, presentation design and motion graphics. Prior to founding Design Revelations in 2001, Bryan Schaeffer has worked for Architectural Firms and Ad Agencies in the Seattle/Tacoma region. Mr. Schaeffer's graphic design experience covers a wide range from detailed product illustration to user interface design with particularly strong expertise in multimedia for live events. Mr. Schaeffer is a 1990 Graduate of Pacific Lutheran University where he received a Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design. He has completed a scholarship Art Director course at the Seattle School of Visual Concepts in 2001. Mr. Schaeffer currently resides in Seattle, WA with his wife Anne and their identical twin girls where he makes frequent trips to recreate in the Cascades.

For more than 25 years Jon Behrens has worked completely outside of the mainstream, He began to make films as a teenager in the late seventies, starting out with his Grandfathers Wollensak regular 8mm camera and then moving on to 16mm shortly there after. Since the age of 16 Behrens has made well over 100 films of various lengths and subject matters and approaches, from documents of the early Seattle punk rock scene to poetic film experiments in which the celluloid film stock itself has been manipulated. Over the years Jon has mastered the use of the optical printer. Behrens has screened his films in cities throughout the World Including the Seattle International Film Festival, The International Experimental Film Expo in Boulder Co, The Blinding Light Cinema in Vancouver BC, The Ann Arbor Film Festival and many many others. Jon has been called one of the Northwest's most prolific filmmakers. In addition to filmmaking Behrens has taught workshops and classes on experimental film at Northwest Film Forum and the AFLN and also taught workshops on optical printing, direct animation techniques and hand processing of motion picture films. Jon Behrens lives and works in Seattle.

Andy Spletzer helped start The Stranger in 1991, where he writes the column "Blow Up" about the local film production and exhibition scene. Over the last several years he has worked as a Script Supervisor on 7 feature films and several more shorts and music videos. His hobbies include playing in the dirt and watching Unsolved Mysteries.

Clyde Petersen’s Wallingford home studio—a glorified closet—is dominated by what appears to be the skeleton of a tall, narrow chest of drawers. Black metal scaffolding holds several pieces of horizontal glass at varying heights, on which sit cut-out illustrations. “It’s a multiplane,” Petersen, 29, says, explaining that the animation device (made obsolete by computer technology) was invented in 1933 by an employee of the Walt Disney company, who devised it as a way to give depth to animation. Disney used one for Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia and other films, and Petersen—whose homemade version is, in fact, a deconstructed Ikea dresser—is using it to animate a music video (due out this month) for Portland band Quasi.

The multiplane is a suitable metaphor for the thoughtful, forthcoming Petersen, who emanates depth and works on many different planes at once. Under his production company, Do It for the Girls (started in 2005), he creates animated music videos, builds band Web sites, and designs CD art and T-shirts. He also teaches animation to junior high school students at Northwest Film Forum and for Coyote Central (at 911 Media Arts), and plays guitar with three Seattle bands.

Petersen’s history with animation goes back to his student days at Garfield High School, where he made stop-motion films with close friend and sometimes collaborator Forrest Baum. He went on to study filmmaking at Western Washington University, where—due to an intense interest in music—he assumed he’d use his degree to make documentaries about bands. But when he became Seattle musician Laura Veirs’ roadie, he changed direction. He wound up creating an animated music video for her song “Secret Someones.” After seeing it, Warner Bros. hired him to create Veirs’ next video. Soon Petersen found himself making animated videos for several Northwest bands, and last year local label Kill Rock Stars hired him as one of its official video creators. Petersen says his main joy in animation is building sets, which he enlivens with paper cut-outs, Claymation creatures, yarn, sock puppets and more; he attributes this in part to the influence of his architect father and an early fascination with his dad’s model buildings. “As a kid I really wanted to be a professional model builder,” he recalls.

Acknowledging the happy, playful nature of most of his films, he notes, “I’m the lightest animator of my friends—other people deal with more realism.” What’s also notable about his work is how much his technique varies film to film. “I always try to do something I haven’t done before,” says Petersen, who had never used a multiplane before the Quasi video. “I like to feel like I’m always learning something new.”

Originally published in March 2010 by Seattle Magazine