Ben inadvertently crosses into Kathryn’s battlezone by asking her to “pass the salt” before actually tasting his meal. An ordinary dinner with daughter Ashley quickly escalates into a minefield of missteps for both parents.

“Pass the Salt” marks my first time directing without authoring a film. Producer Sally Cook brought me the script written by Cammy Brickell and Gary M. Soldati, who also act as the two principal leads. To convince me to direct, they auditioned the entire piece at a conference room on the Dreamworks Animation campus. Immediately I recognized their amazing comedic, improvisational timing and knew my challenge as a director would be to transition their stage performance to screen without screwing it up! All shot in one day, this was a Dreamworks Animation Film Group production in conjuction with Cammie Brickell’s SketchMom Productions.

After they accidentally found millions and killed the gangster that came to retrieve the missing cash, Jason waits for Richard to show up with the money so they can make a run for it.

I wrote, directed and edited “Question of Trust” to be a cut scene from a fictional feature I had roughed out. It was done on a shoestring budget, all shot in one day, utilizing our Dreamworks Animation Film Group for crew the day of the shoot.

While working on a TV special at Dreamworks Animation, the producer asked if some people on the crew would be willing to make a 15 second commercial spot for a fake product or promotional so it could be slugged into the commercial breaks for judging the pacing of the TV special.

“Mythbusters” was at its peak of popularity at this point, so I decided to create a promo for a fake show about two knuckleheads that should never be allowed to play with high voltage equipment… or small, furry animals.

“Everybody Loves Nathan!” was shot for the PDI/Dreamworks Animation Lo-Tech film festival and won 1st prize in 2008. The challenge that year was entitled “Between-The-Lines” and the rules were:

1. 3 minutes or less (not including titles)
2. No CG!
3. The film must start and end with these two lines:
   “Open your eyes.” and “What are you going to do with that?”

At the time, Nathan Loofbourrow and I were co-supervising the rigging on “How to Train Your Dragon” and I decided to take the inevitable friction of our working closely together and raise it to ridiculous proportions.

Don’t you hate it when you come back from a business trip and a weaponized flu virus has turned your neighborhood into a deathtrap of voracious, homicidal cannibals?

I created “Feelin' Bad” for the PDI/Dreamworks Animation Lo-Tech festival in 2006. The rules were:

1. 3 minutes or less (not including titles)
2. No CG!
3. The main character must deal with a grilled cheese sandwich.

The third rule begs the story to be a comedy, so that’s exactly what I DIDN’T want to do. I wanted to try my hand at the Suspense/Horror genre and found out that it’s tough to build tension in 3 minutes or less. Consequently, the film’s 8 minute running time disqualified it for prize consideration, but was included in the festival and received a lot of positive attention.

As part of Industrial Light + Magic’s “Portrait Series” in 2001 I was asked to pick an employee and create a short documentary portrait of them. Jean Bolte is a fabulously talented texture painter and was in the midst of working on the Star Wars prequels at that time. Being careful to avoid copy-written material in the background, I was able to follow Jean around with a video camera and document her activities at ILM.

Any film that takes itself as seriously “Rambo: First Blood Part II” calls out for parody. This mash-up of Gumby and Rambo came about as an informal film festival challenge at work in 1985 where the entries had to be made from a single roll of Super-8 film with all edits IN CAMERA. Choosing to create an animated, stop-motion film, instead of live-action, gave me the ability to plan and execute each scene more carefully, but the pressure was on since there could not be any retakes of any shots. Everything was shot straight-ahead, in order, by myself in a 24 hour period.

“Last chance to fill up for a 100 million miles!”

Shot over the summer of 1974 after graduating from Lima Senior High in Ohio, it is an amalgam of high spirited youth, good friends, “The Sting”, “Star Trek”, “2001: A Space Odyssey”, my future career in VFX and fun.