DAVID MCLAIN regularly shoots feature length assignments around the world for National Geographic Magazine. He works with every kind of person under any kind of condition and create timeless images for a client with the highest visual standards on earth.
This experience informs his commercial work which revolves around bringing brands to life in ways people recognize as authentic and real. David wants people to look at the images he creates for companies and feel inspired, not sold to. In this sense, his commercial work is very personal and he seeks collaborations with like minded clients.
More recently David has become passionate about the shifting media landscape and new possibilities for visual communication. To embrace these changes, he co-founded Merge, a boutique company dedicated to telling brand stories through still photographs and moving images that unfold seamlessly across an array of media. From print to web to television and back.
At home, David lives with his family in a 200 year old farmhouse with a big post beam barn on 2 beautiful acres just outside of Portland, Maine, a place that has always triggered an instinctual sense of belonging. His family, home, and Maine ground David and fuel the boundless sense of possibility and hope he bring to his work. www.davidmclain.com
JEROME THELIA draws on 20 years of post-production and production experience. His work includes commercials, music videos, TV series, feature films, documentaries, and the distance learning projects that introduced him to David McLain. Jerome's focus has consistently been at the intersection of art and technology, allowing him to combine his interests in science, music, and photography into a finely-tuned visual effects artist, colorist, and director.
Jerome's April '09 colorist/compositor reel
Jerome's film interest began young; as the trilingual son of Italian and French film lovers, he spent a good part of his childhood sharing in their favorite films: Woody Allen, Truffaut, Antonioni, Altman, and Bergman were mixed and often placed on equal footing with Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark. While pursuing a degree in French and Film Studies at the University of Minnesota, Jerome took classes from Director/Cinematographer Mike Rivard, forming a long-term mentorship and collaboration with Rivard, who passed on a healthy mix of practical commercial experience, avant-guard filmmaking, and R&B musicianship. Jerome and Mike would work together on dozens of commercial and art projects through the 90's. These ranged from Prince music videos to Dario Argento's film "Trauma" to Rivard's award winning feature documentary on Native American poet Jim Northrup, "With Reservations". During this time Jerome also honed his skills as a computer animator, compositor, and editor while working with some of Minnesota's finest directors and post-production artists at Northwest Teleproductions, First TV, and Greer & Associates.
In 1999, Jerome was hired by Classroom Connect as Media Technologist for the Quest; a group of scientists and media makers that traveled four continents while delivering real-time lessons to kids in classrooms all over the world. Highlights included a 7 week trip along the Silk Road through China, an expedition across Australia to examine the Song Lines of Aboriginal Australians, and an exploration of longevity in Okinawa, Japan. The group produced hundreds of documentary shorts and brought Jerome and David McLain together in their first new media collaborations.
In January of 2001, Jerome moved to New York City to pursue a long term collaboration with David McLain in Merge, freelance film work, and a teaching career at the School of Visual Arts. Recently he has worked on a range of projects that include colorist and restoration artist on "2 or 3 Things I Know About Her", a Criterion Collection release of Godard's 1967 landmark film; as colorist on "Meskada", a feature film directed by Josh Sternfeld to be released in 2010; as colorist and underwater cinematographer on a series of films produced by acclaimed artist/photographer Richard Mosse; and as project director of Merge's groundbreaking 5 channel site-specific video installation for Nau's Soho store, among many other strange and interesting projects.
Jerome is married to producer Anne Carkeet. They live in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn with their two cats. He has been a member of the faculty of the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan since 2001.