Surreal, ethereal, wistful, and witty, I just allow my imagination to be taken into his complex, mysterious worlds.”[4] The Austin Chronicle says, "(Chel White's) work seems to dispatch itself in some secret, subversive code, flashing messages amid animation, obscure stock footage, and actors with crazy eyes.
"[5] Chel White has directed music videos for Radiohead's Thom Yorke,[6] The Melvins,[7] Tom Brosseau, Chrystabell & David Lynch, and collaborated with the Oregon Symphony.
Along with Ray Di Carlo and David Daniels, Chel White is a co-founder of the international production company Bent Image Lab[10] in Portland, Oregon.
Chel White was born in Kansas City, Missouri and grew up in Colorado, Michigan, Stockholm, and Evanston, Illinois where his father was a Northwestern University professor and his mother a schoolteacher.
[16] The Washington Post describes it as “(a) musical frolic which wittily builds on ghostly, distorted images crossing the plate glass of a copier.”[17] The films that followed include Dirt (1998), Soulmate (2000), Passage (2001), Magda (2004), A Painful Glimpse Into My Writing Process in Less Than 60 Seconds (2005), Wind (2007), the feature film Bucksville (2011), the Donald Trump horror parody Little Donnie (2017), and Dreams of a Fallen Astronaut (2020) part of the Gratzfilm omnibus The One Minute Memoir.
"[20] White's 2007 short film, Wind, was commissioned by Radiohead’s creative director Dilly Gent and the climate change awareness group Live Earth.
Written and produced well before the Occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and the 2016 Trump presidential election, Bucksville is a dark but eerily beautiful and prescient story about a young man who struggles to escape the reality of being bound for life to a disenfranchised, small town radical militia started 20 years ago by his father.
[26] Distributed by Phase 4 Films, Bucksville stars Thomas Stroppel, Ted Rooney and Allen Nause, with a cameo role by Tom Berenger as The Patron of Justice.
[37] Chel White started his professional career in 1986, working as an animator for film director Jim Blashfield on music videos for Paul Simon, Tears for Fears and Michael Jackson.
The success of the SNL shorts led to other holiday themed stop motion projects that White would direct through Bent Image Lab, including two children's television specials for Hallmark Channel.
His personal favorite ads he directed are for the Washington State Department of Health in a campaign of surreal anti-smoking public service announcements aimed at children.