Spot Welders Directors

Best friends since the seventh grade, josh melnick and xander charity never imagined they?d be directing together? or alone, for that matter. If their collaboration is a surprise, the increasing buzz surrounding the duo is not. They have been turning heads since their first project together, a music video for dead cab for cutie. What began as a hair-brained idea on a drunken road trip trough mexico evolved into a story about a young couple?s last day together. The vid was selected for inclusion in resfest 2003 and landed them on the roster of partisan.
Soon after joining partisan, josh and xander made a video for the postal service?s break-out hit, ?such great heights?. A love affair set in a microchip factory, the promo was again a resfest winner and mvpa nominee. The duo?s name recognition led to commercial assignments.
And so you know these guys have spent some time apart..
After attending grade school and high school together in New york city, josh and xander temporarily parted ways. Josh went to yale uni where he earned a degree in fine arts with a concentration in sculpture and video art. Xander attended darthmouth college, where he also studied fine arts, receiving a combined major in film and photography. Upon graduation, josh turned his creative attention towards editing, cutting everything from commercials and music videos to network television programs, short films and documentaries. Xander returned to new york, where he became a designer and branding consultant for leading watch and jewelry house David yurman. He made time to nurture his love for filmmaking with more personal documentary and short-form pursuits.

Omri Cohen is among today’s most prolific young directors. He first burst onto the directing scene in 2007 with his Red Hot Chili Peppers’ video “Charlie,” made for a YouTube contest, which promptly landed him a meeting with Anthony Kiedes, who loved it.
Cohen kicked off his commercial career in 2011 with the heralded Nike “Yards” spot for the World Cup of Cricket via JWT Bangalore. Filmed on the streets of Bombay, “Yards” earned a Bronze Abby at Goafest India and Cohen recognition in SHOOT’s prestigious New Directors Showcase. Characterized by a similar anticipatory and anthemic spirit is Cohen’s “March to 48 Kickoff,” the first commercial in Pepsi’s “Are You Fan Enough” campaign via TBWA/Chiat/Day, which broke on NFL opening day.

Cohen is a versatile filmmaker whose style is not singular, but rather driven by what best reflects the idea while conveying the subtleties of human nature. He shot up the ranks quickly, directing spots for multi-national brands like Nike and Amazon. His Nike “Los Fearless” campaign documents the routines of star athletes, while his filmmaking suggests the broader influence of neighborhood cultures on their successes. For Amazon, Cohen captured a raw realism with portrait-like glimpses of people using their Kindles.

Recently, Cohen has directed commercial projects for top-tier brands including Reebok, Microsoft, Google, Verizon, Comcast, USPS, and a Puma campaign starring Olympian sprinter Usain Bolt shot in Jamaica.

Cohen is based in Los Angeles, but spends the majority of his time shooting in different cities around the world. 

Nicolai Fuglsig, born 1972, started his photographic carrier at the age of 16 at a local Danish newspaper. In 1994 he entered the Danish School of Journalism in Denmark, where he attended the four year education as a photojournalist.
His graduate project , a press book entitled Muslumovo, won widespread international acclaim and was also awarded a prize for the best overseas photojournalistic work by the largest Danish Newspaper, Jyllands Posten.
Subsequently Nicolai Fuglsig received the World Press Photo 1999 1st Prize in the category " Nature and Environment Stories" for the Muslumovo Story and was given the ICP Infinity Award by the International Center of Photography, New York and the Kodak Young Photograher Award. Continuing his development as a photographer and visual story teller Nicolai Fuglsig began experimenting with video and soon came to realize that moving pictures hit a nerve in him.
Fuglsig has succesfully transferred the strong visual style of his still photography into living pictures with commercials and documentaries. Fuglsig is currently devoting himself to the motion picture realm, directing music videos and spots for The Dansih Red Cross and Politiken.

Best friends since the seventh grade, josh melnick and xander charity never imagined they?d be directing together? or alone, for that matter. If their collaboration is a surprise, the increasing buzz surrounding the duo is not. They have been turning heads since their first project together, a music video for dead cab for cutie. What began as a hair-brained idea on a drunken road trip trough mexico evolved into a story about a young couple?s last day together. The vid was selected for inclusion in resfest 2003 and landed them on the roster of partisan.
Soon after joining partisan, josh and xander made a video for the postal service?s break-out hit, ?such great heights?. A love affair set in a microchip factory, the promo was again a resfest winner and mvpa nominee. The duo?s name recognition led to commercial assignments.
And so you know these guys have spent some time apart..
After attending grade school and high school together in New york city, josh and xander temporarily parted ways. Josh went to yale uni where he earned a degree in fine arts with a concentration in sculpture and video art. Xander attended darthmouth college, where he also studied fine arts, receiving a combined major in film and photography. Upon graduation, josh turned his creative attention towards editing, cutting everything from commercials and music videos to network television programs, short films and documentaries. Xander returned to new york, where he became a designer and branding consultant for leading watch and jewelry house David yurman. He made time to nurture his love for filmmaking with more personal documentary and short-form pursuits.

Noam Murro is a multi-award winning commercials director. He has been nominated for DGA Director of the Year five times, winning the honor in 2005. His unique style was established in 1994 with a memorable campaign that captured elderly customers in Katz's famous deli on New York City's Lower East Side. This led to documentary-style exposes of tobacco monsters for the California Department of Health as well as lighter work for Fox Sports. The poignant Flatline spot for Toshiba, in which a dying man's life flashes before him, was singled out and applauded by the New York Times.
In 2002, he directed Saturn's Sheet Metal, a conceptually driven spot that was highly critically acclaimed. In 2003, Adcritic.com labeled his Got Milk? commercial as the best spot of the year. It went on to become the winner of a Gold Lion at the 2003 Cannes Lions awards. Murro's campaign for Olympus garnered him a second Gold Lion at the 2005 awards along with a number of Silver and Bronze statues for other commercials. Recently, Creativity Magazine named him as one of the industry's 50 most influential people in the last 20 years. He was also recently named the UK's #1 director by Campaign magazine.
As well as directing, he is also the founder of Biscuit Filmworks. Smart People is his first feature film. 

Mark Pellington is also known as the "Godfather of Music Videos" featuring a lot of the MTV hey-day from the '90's, including ?Jeremy? by Pearl Jam.
Mark Pellington is a filmmaker based in Los Angeles. A native of Baltimore, MD, he attended the University of Virginia, receiving a B.A. in Rhetoric in 1984. Upon graduation, he joined MTV's award-winning On-Air Promotions Department, where he developed a series of short conceptual spots, editing original footage with found sound and images. This groundbreaking training in post-production collage and unusual sound/image/text juxtaposition became a primary focus of Pellington's early work.
While at MTV, he branched out as a freelance music video director completing clips for Information Society, Malcolm McLaren, and De La Soul, among others. He also ventured into the art world, collaborating on text image pieces with New York gallery artist Jenny Holzer and William Burroughs.
In 1988, Pellington developed an idea for a non-linear collage program. Created in partnership with MTV Europe producer/director Jon Klein, Buzz was an ambitious 13-part global series commissioned by MTV and channel 4 (UK). Hailed by critics as progressive adventurous television, it was the culmination of Pellington's MTV career.
Upon completing Buzz, Mark refined his unique personal vision through a series of TV and video projects. He is internationally recognized as one of the world's Premiere music video directors. His video for Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" is one of the most popular in history, as well as one of the most honored. It earned him Best Director at the 1992 Billboard Video Music Awards, and picked up four 1993 MTV Video Music Awards, including Best Director and Video of the Year.
His Videos for such noted rock, pop, and rap performers as U2, PM Dawn, Public Enemy and Alice in Chains form a prolific and often imitated body of work. A piece for INXS, entitled "Beautiful Girl," is a provocative visual essay on the female body that garnered a Grammy nomination. With his video for the Jungle Brothers' "I Get A Kick Out Of You," Pellington joined Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch, and Jonathan Demme as one of the elite group of directors chosen for Red, Hot & Blue, a landmark AIDS special shown on ABC and later released on home video.
Mark brought his commentary on television and media manipulation techniques to large stadiums around the world when he helped create the multi-screen image environment for U2's highly acclaimed "Zoo TV" tour.
He also served as creative director on an experimental multi-media project for the Spanish exhibition at World Expo ?92 in Seville, Spain. "The Memory Palace" was a five-screen live-action/film evocation of cyberspace made in collaboration with science fiction writer William Gibson, Spanish performance group La Fura Dels Baus, Buzz director Mark Neale, artist Julia Heyward, and musicians Brian Eno and Peter Gabriel.
Outside of the music world, Pellington developed his eye for documentary and narrative. Words In Your Face, a half-hour film he created for PBS's prestigious series Alive From Off Center, anticipated the current appeal of spoken word poetry. A half-hour television poem, Words featured John Leguizamo, KRS-ONE and Henry Rollins, and was chosen as one of six U.S. entries at the 1992 Input Festival.
Pellington wrapped up Red Hot & Dance and collaborated with Obie-award winning director David Gordon and music producer Hal Willner on a half-hour live action cartoon called "Punch and Judy Get Divorced" for the PBS series Alive TV.
In 1993 he created his most personal work to date, a 30-minute film for PBS, called Father's Daze, in which he came to terms with his father's suffering from Alzheimer's disease. This intense, impressionistic diary film was screened at the Berlin, Montreal and Rotterdam Film Festivals and was praised by critics worldwide.
The United States of Poetry was a five-part series for PBS that took a year-and-a-half to complete. In the program, Pellington takes the v

Born in Bloomington, Illinois, it goes without question that his mother’s work as deputy coroner played an important role in shaping Baker’s view of the world. The strange domain of forensics and death was part of the norm, coloring his imagination with hints of the bizarre and giving him a sense that not everything is what it appears to be. Portraying worlds that are in every sense familiar, he is able to integrate those elements that are just a tad bit off. Whether it’s sex-crazed winemakers, the Women’s US Soccer Team or store mannequins, in Baker’s vision they are given a harmonious place to coexist. It is this reality-based humor, this eye for the absurd, that has become his unique signature. Baker has won every global coveted award including the Director’s Guild of America award for Best Director, the Grand Prix at Cannes, gold pencils from D&AD and has been inducted into the MOMA/AICP show 18 times. Baker has worked his way up through the various stages of the commercial world and ultimately partnered with his longtime producer to form harvest films, inc. Having attracted a selection of America’s most talented directors, harvest continues to excel as one the most sought after production companies.