RUN-OF-SHOW

By

Eddy Von Mueller

Creative Director

EARLY ADAPTOR

1976. America’s Bicentennial Year. In January, Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia was inaugurated as the 36th president of the United States (Carter was also a decorated Navy veteran with extensive experience on nuclear submarines, but hey, the whole “peanut farmer from Plains” schtick played great in rural districts). In September, JVC launched its new VHS system to compete with Sony’s Betamax, sparking the home video “format war.” In December, Ted Turner’s Atlanta-based WTCG became the first “superstation,” available to millions of viewers thanks to a stable satellite uplink and the rapid expansion of cable systems across the United States.

And in 1976 (in September, actually, the same month VHS made its debut), Atlanta Video was born.

AV is an Atlanta original: the first commercial video production company in Georgia and one of the first anywhere in the Southeast. You might say we’ve grown up with the video industry. Formats have emerged, evolved, and obsolesced (anyone remember ¾”? How ‘bout D2?). Playback and distribution technologies have come and gone. At every step of this long journey, Atlanta Video has stayed abreast of the latest innovations without ever losing sight of those things that never wear out: professionalism, visual impact, and effective storytelling. We’ve never been the biggest show in town (at least, not since we were the only show in town), or the flashiest, but Atlanta Video has staying power. What some people may not know about Atlanta’s oldest video production company is how committed we are to the region’s ever-growing community of media-makers and filmmakers. From its founding, AV has had strong ties to Atlanta’s powerhouse colleges and universities. Bill Brown, Atlanta Video’s president and co-founder, was a keystone member of the Visual Arts faculty at Emory University. I served proudly on the Emory Film and Media Studies faculty, and before that, on the Film and Video faculty at Georgia State. Over the years, countless aspiring creatives exploring careers in screen media got their first professional experience working as interns, crew members, and creatives on Atlanta Video projects. 70% of our staff started at the company as student interns. 

There will be a lot of changes coming to Atlanta Video in the months and years to come. In addition to our decades-long commitment to providing competitively priced, state-of-the-art production services to commercial and institutional clients, AV now offers a select suite of creative and development services. We offer marketing and messaging support as well as scripting, previsualization, budgeting, and scheduling for documentary, episodic, and feature-length content. Atlanta Video will also be partnering this year with passionate local creators to produce original content.

It’s a crazy time in the media business. The pace of technological change continues to accelerate. The distribution landscape is being convulsed by rapid shifts in consumer behavior and delivery systems. Predicting the performance of everything from $200 million tentpoles to short-format streaming videos seems to get harder every day. But after nearly half a century, one thing is clear to all of us at Atlanta Video: the only constant in the screen trade is change. We’re excited to meet the new challenges and explore the new opportunities of this dynamic moment — and to help you tell your stories, share your dreams, and get your message out.

So if you need a seasoned team of production professionals to shoot your spot, or tech-savvy support to ensure that your virtual conference or meeting flows without a hitch, or if you have a killer idea for the next streaming hit, we’d love to be involved.  

My take on great films and on demand series currently available.

VIDEO on DEMAND

Netflix:

Versace: Well produced story of the assassination of fashion icon Gianni Versace. His killer, Andrew Cunanan, is a high IQ gay man who turns his angst from failed high expectations into a serial killing spree. The shots of Versace’s Miami Beach mansion are reason enough to watch this addicting program.

Russian Doll: Very odd NYC story with wickedly ironic characters and dialogue. A demi-monde circus with constant resurrections of the main character. Way beyond Sex in the City if you are interested in urban sex and perversion stories.  

Babylon Berlin: Not a lot of buzz on this series but it’s over the top production values and Weimer Republic setting make this one of the best under the radar programs on Netflix. Pay close attention to the nightclub scenes. Nobody has done decadence better than Weimer Berlin.

Velvet Buzzsaw: Art hustlers at work in this take on the insane gallery system. Non-stop sexual transactions and out right cash payoffs have become the new normal in the hyper sophisticated world of high stakes art collecting. On Netflix.

The Kominsky Method: Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin bring a special kind of talent to this old happens comedy. Some of the best comedy writing on planet earth. On Netflix.

The Hidden: An under the radar masterpiece. Like just about everything from the UK, it’s a police procedural, but this one is pure noir with stunningly original directing, photography, and music. It’s a pleasure to watch filmmaking this good in a far corner of the on demand world. Shot in Wales with dialogue in Welsh and English. On Acorn Network available on Amazon Prime.

Penozav (Black Widow): A seemingly normal family in the Netherlands in thrown into chaos when the father is killed leaving his wife to clean up his drug trafficking debts. Rather than coming clean, this bereaved widow tries to outsmart both the police and the drug underworld low lifes that are closing in from all sides. Available on Amazon Prime.

FILMS:

Best Film of 2018: Roma. It’s not even close. This is one of those transcendent films that comes along every decade or so. In the same strata as L’Atlante, Citizen Kane, Casablanca, 2001 A Space Odyssey, 8 1/2, Wings of Desire, and Blue Velvet.

I hear complaints that it’s too slow, in black and white, and that the characters are too other. Maybe but sometimes nuance is lost when entertainment is the only reason you have for watching a film. The best films sometimes require a commitment beyond the lust for constant amusement. Alfonso Cuaron’s masterpiece shows us the intertwined lives of upper and working class Mexicans. It’s pure poetry and visual magic. Also on Netflix.

Cold War, the Academy Award nominee for best foreign film, from Poland, is a serious meditation of life under an authoritarian regime.

Cold War is shot in black and white in a very odd square frame format. Like the framing, the characters seem trapped a world with well defined borders that one crosses at his or her peril.

They Shall Not Grow Old is another astonishing 2018 achievement. Peter Jackson took archival WWI film and completely transformed the footage into 3-D color with a sound track that humanizes the once grainy images into living breathing men and women. At one point the black and white stock shots morph into spectacular color. The audience gasps in disbelief. This is digital technology at it’s highest use.

The Death of Stalin: My nominee for best comedy of the last few years. Steve Buscemi amusingly plays Nikita Khruschev but the show is stolen by Simon Russell Beale, who plays Beria, Stalin’s psychopathic head of the secret police. Laugh out loud black comedy, a rare thing these days.

Going to Charleston...

A chance to shoot some video in this most beautiful of southern cities and add to my ongoing montage of things I like about the South. . 

Speaking of Hollywood

Speaking of Hollywood we have added Director Rob Schmidt Barracano to our staff for commercials, music videos, narrative, and reality projects. His credits include the features Wrong Turn (20th century Fox) and Crime & Punishment in Suburbia (Metro Goldwyn Mayer).  

Academy Awards 2017

My suspicious nature makes me skeptical of the Best Picture award mistake.  I personally thought Manchester by the Sea or Silence would have been a better choice for best film. I also liked Nocturnal Animals but I've always been a sucker for Noir films. The director of La La Land, Damien Chazelle, is very talented. His Whiplash was stunningly original and a better film than La La Land. Moonlight was a very impressive film by a group of people from my home town that came out of nowhere. 

I Am Not Your Negro should have gotten the best Doc award. It isn't pleasant to watch but an important film about the civil rights movement.