The Film that Started a Career - 5 Deep Breaths

Found this film through the website Shadow & Act, 2011

Seith Mann’s impressive 20-minute short film called 5 Deep Breaths - his NYU MFA thesis project in 2002, which helped launch Mann’s career, directing several notable television shows – notably episodes of HBO’s hit, The Wire.

Some of the short film’s accolades: premiered at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival; it was one of 4 American shorts selected to screen at the Cinefondation Competition at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival; It won the Best Narrative Short Film award at the 2003 Los Angeles IFP/West Film Festival. Filmmaker magazine named Mann one of their 25 new faces of independent film in 2003. And the IFP gave Mann the Gordon Parks Awards for Emerging African-American Filmmakers; and there’s a lot more.

Television producer Robert F. Colesberry saw Five Deep Breaths, and introduced the other producers of The Wire to it. The producers approached Mann and asked him to shadow their directors during production of the third season in 2004. And 2 years later, in 2006, Mann joined the directing crew of The Wire’s fourth season, and later went onto helm episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, Cold Case, Entourage, Friday Night Lights, Heroes, and many more shows.

Mann has been working on a feature film script titled Come Sunday, which would be his debut. The script won two development awards (the Emerging Narrative Screenwriting Award and the Gordon Parks Award for Screenwriting) from the IFP in 2004.

Most recently, Seith was hired to adapt and direct the graphic novel MISS: Better Living Through Crime, which, as he told us, is still in the works, with a last draft of the script shipped off to the production company, which will be followed by the search for talent and financing. Spike Lee is executive producing that by the way.- Tambay, Shadow & Act

UPDATE APRIL 2015
The project written about in Shadow & Act above in 2011 MISS: Better Living Through Crime is still being listed a "in development" which as they call in Hollywood "development hell" meaning it will more than likely never get made.

Don't cry for Seith Mann though as he has to date 40 directing credits for numerous television shows including popular shows The Wire, Dexter, Homeland and The Walking Dead. You can check out his extensive credits on IMDb here