Fantastic commencement address by author Neil Gaiman about a life in the arts, being freelance, wisdom and faking it among other things. Definitely worth a listen.
Neil Gaiman speaks. Worth a listen.
Posted in Fun with tags address, advice, arts, commencement, freelance, Neil Gaiman, speech on May 2, 2013 by Scott McDermott1 Year of Beyond Cinema
Posted in News with tags AFCI, Beyond Cinema, cover, issue, mag, magazine, publication on May 2, 2013 by Scott McDermott
4 issues of Beyond Cinema, the AFCI publication edited by Elliot Kotek, are now complete. It feels like only yesterday the first one was getting underway. Congratulations to Elliot, Peter Trimarco, Kevin Clark and everyone at AFCI for a really great magazine.
The Rapidly Closing Window
Posted in Fun with tags access, celebrity, film, Karl, Lagerfeld, Malcolm, nowness, Short, Venville, zillions on April 23, 2013 by Scott McDermottI recently saw this great little short film below by Malcolm Venville on Nowness and thought it was genius in how it perfectly illustrated the all too frequent process of dwindling access when it comes to shooting celebrities. It starts with high concept plans and grand promises and slowly it gets whittled away by circumstance, miscommunication, politics, scheduling and luck so that in the end you are fighting for what is actually possible to achieve within the basic properties of physics: time, space, and gravity. It’s all about what you do in the moment of opportunity you finally end up getting, no matter what you went through to get there and how short it may be. Kudos to Malcolm for taking a fairly absurd situation and turning it around into a fun little film. I guess he still did get to go to St. Moritz too and that’s not so bad. On the flip side, I actually photographed Malcolm in 2010 at the Toronto Film Festival when he was there promoting Henry’s Crime which he directed. I remember him being very nice and he gave me all the time I needed to take his picture.
The Moment
Posted in News with tags chance, host, Kurt Warner, reality, second, show, The Moment, tv, USA Network on April 18, 2013 by Scott McDermott
The new reality show The Moment premiered last week on USA Network and episode 2 is on tonight. It’s a show hosted by Kurt Warner that gives people a second chance at a career they wished they had pursued. We shot the picture below in Phoenix just before the holidays and the one above in January in New York along side the TV promo shoot for the show. Kurt is a super nice guy and certainly has an amazing second chance story of his own. He mentioned he was having snow delivered to his house that afternoon so his 7 kids could play in the snow on Christmas – in Arizona. That’s pretty cool.
Smelling 100% Handsome
Posted in BTS, News with tags baseball, CJ Wilson, flake-free, handsome, head and shoulders, Josh Hamilton, Old Spice, smell, whiff on April 10, 2013 by Scott McDermott
Back in January I was asked to shoot Los Angeles Angels, CJ Wilson and Josh Hamilton for the new Head and Shoulders and Old Spice cross branding campaign. In addition to supporting the TV spots below (and the BTS featuring the back of my head) the pics will also be used in the Season of the Whiff campaign, where Head and Shoulders will donate $1 for every strikeout this season to MLB’s RBI program promoting inner city youth baseball. There will be more pics to come as the campaign rolls out over the course of the season.
The Following for Entertainment Weekly.
Posted in BTS, News with tags BTS, entertainment weekly, EW, Fox, Kevin Bacon, magazine, series, Shawn Ashmore, shooting, story, The Following, tv on March 15, 2013 by Scott McDermott
Last week Entertainment Weekly asked me to head out to the Brooklyn Navy Yards to where they film the new hit FOX TV show The Following to shoot some portraits of Kevin Bacon and Shawn Ashmore. It was a very cold and windy day and the guys had just wrapped a pretty intense interrogation scene involving some eye gouging, pipe hitting and suspect stomping, which is harder work than it sounds, but they were both good sports throughout our very cold shoot. Here are some shots that didn’t make it into the story that ran in todays issue as well as some behind the scenes pics from while they were filming. Thank you to Ahmed Fakhr at EW and Joanna Wolff at FOX for making it all happen. I am now officially only 1 degree away from Kevin Bacon.
