Michelle Claase

Screenwriter | Creative Producer | Editor

Michelle Claase is a filmmaker and visual storyteller working across film and television as a
creative producer, screenwriter, and post-production editor.Her work spans award-winning short films, music videos, internationally exhibited art, and creative consulting for global brands. She is an optioned screenwriter and format creator, actively developing both scripted and unscripted projects across genres with international producing partners.Notable achievements include being selected as a finalist for the Banijay Launch accelerator (2025) for her original unscripted format Make or Break; Top 5 finalist in the Shore Scripts Development Fund (2023) for her fictional project Making Waves; winning Best Editing for Siphonophore (2019) at the South Film and Arts Academy Festival; and receiving an illycaffè S.p.A. artist grant to attend an artist residency at UNIDEE – University of Ideas, Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto in Biella, Italy (2016).She is the founder of PITCHER THIS, a creative service supporting film and TV professionals with visual pitch and development materials, and a lecturer in the Masters in International Screenwriting and Production (MISP) at ALMED Unicatt - Università Cattolica.Originally from South Africa, Michelle spent a decade in Hong Kong before relocating to Italy. She is a former fashion model and trained visual artist, holding a BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design, where she graduated as valedictorian, and a Master’s degree in Screenwriting and Film Production.

SELECTED WORK

PROJECTS IN DEVELOPMENT

SCRIPTED

UNSCRIPTED

KIDS CONTENT

CONSULTATIONS

I’ve collaborated with directors as an editing consultant, helping trim up to five minutes from feature films to
enhance the clarity and story. My detailed notes and suggestions focus on narrative flow and audience impact.
Some projects include:

Michelle works as a Consultant for both scripted and unscripted, branded video content:

As a video consultant for Technogym, Michelle has worked as an on-set author
(promo-writer, talent director) and post-production supervisor on various projects, including:

ART

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Michelle Claase is a multi-media artist with a BFA in Painting from Savannah College of Art and Design where she graduated as valedictorian in 2017. Her works spans video and sound instillation to mixed media and oil painting and her interest in the alteration and manipulation of image and language lies at the core of Michelle’s work. Claase was born in South Africa, and moved to Hong Kong in 2008, where she based herself for the next 10 years. During this time, she worked as an international fashion model and pursued her BFA.Her art has featured in a number of group exhibitions, including: Alteration (2018) at Millepiani Gallery in Rome; Mediocre (2018) at NockArt Gallery in Hong Kong; Trans.Figuration (2017) at Ko Shing Gallery; Disclosed (2016) at Campfire Creative in Hong Kong. In 2017, Claase was awarded an illycaffè S.p.A artist grant to attend an artist residency at the UNIDEE - University of Ideas at Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto in Biella, Italy.

REFORMAT

Re-Format is an ongoing visual art series inspired by Claase's background as a fashion model. Claase uses mixed media painting to alter images of models from fashion magazines. By removing their identities, fragmenting their bodies, and reattaching the disassembled parts, the mannequin-like figures are re-visualised to look like puppets. The re-contextualized images evoke notions
about the fashion industry’s exploitive use of body image.

#GOD

In reference to the long-standing history of religion in art, the #GOD series investigates how “god” is depicted in contemporary culture. The series examines the use of image and language related to the term, and is presented in a variety of media. Work consists of black and white, cropped screenshots of newsfeed images assigned with the hashtag (#)god from Instagram, as well as dialogue from Hollywood films where the word “god” is used. The body of work reflects the power of discourse by showing a range of (often contradictory) content that may or may not reveal the extent to which society’s concept of god has been altered over time.

#ART?

The #ART? series, are mixed media works composed of cropped selections of images using the hashtag (#)art, collected from Instagram. These works give a glimpse into what the everyday person considers art.The series aims to explore the definition of the term art, and how it’s definition changes from person to person. Who has authority over what is classified art? Claase uses social media as means to look at how public perceptions about art are portrayed, outside of the institutional context. By using screenshots to capture images (that have nothing in common except the fact that they have both been deemed #art), she uses cropping as a tool, maintaining the white lines that Instagram uses to separate images displayed in the same # category. Claase creates new individual works, that stem from the work of other. But is it art?

#Art? (2019) is a 02’28’’ looped video composed from a series of video clips containing ideas about art from films, juxtaposed with cropped selections of hashtag (#)art images collected from Instagram. The series, But Is It Art? was created as part of the group exhibition titled Mediocre, held at NockArt Gallery in Hong Kong, curated by This Is NOT a Gallery.To label an artwork mediocre, there is the assumption that it is, in fact, an artwork to begin with. But who decided to define it as an artwork? And does the "art" label, not already presume a degree of quality? To explore what mediocrity means in terms of art, Claase looks at how social and entertainment media plays a role in shaping public perceptions about art.

The sound pieces, HE Artist Genius and SHE Artist Genius, highlight the use of language in art documentary films. The sound collage extracts a number of phrases used to describe the persuade the listener into a biased view about art, based on the psychological technique of framing an artist as a genius. By presenting the viewer with a situation where the content of the sound piece interacts with their viewing experience (within the gallery context) the work aims to raise questions about how opinions about art are shaped.

DISCLOSED

Disclosed is a series of multimedia works that explore relationships of dominance and subversion of power through written language.Works such as iTunes Terms and Conditions, Letter from Michelle Obama237 and Mulholland Drive—Extended Version deal with text sources, such as spam emails and movie credits, which are often disregarded or ignored because of the reader's inability to detect authenticity or to process the vast amounts of information they’re confronted with. By avoiding such content, a submissive response is chosen. By adjusting the format and (re)presenting it as art, Claase aims to subvert the viewer's expectations of the content, and to make it more digestible so that the audience may acknowledge the information instead of dismissing it.

iTunes Terms and Conditions
Voice Recorded Audio, played on iPad,
02:24’13’’
2016

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