DAN EDELSTYN – DIRECTOR – started making films after his experiences as a student film critic at UCL and Time Out Paris. His early broadcast commissions include Subverting The City for Channel 4 (2005). Dan has gone on to produce commercials, high end corporate videos and a large sack full of short documentaries for broadcasters including Five and Current TV. Dan’s just completing his debut feature How to Re-Establish a Vodka Empire for More 4’s prestigious True Stories strand.
Contact: Dan@optimisticproductions.co.uk
HILARY POWELL – DIRECTOR – as well as working as director of photography and art director on How to Re-Establish a Vodka Empire, she has found time to make The Games – a short film documenting in and around the Olympic site just before it shut for redevelopment. Powell’s film The Games won audience award at 2007 East End Film Festival and has been acquired by the BFI. She’s a powerful force in the independent film side of the company, and creates wonderful models for animation as well as breathtaking storyboards.
Contact: Hilary@optimisticproductions.co.uk
SIMON BALL – HEAD OF POST AND ANIMATION – graduated with a degree in Time Based Arts from UWE – before gaining extensive experience in Bristol’s animation community – including two films he made with Aardman Animations. Unable to resist the allure of the smog, Simon gravitated to London where he undertook an MA in Digital Arts at Camberwell. Since graduating, Simon found himself chained to a desk at Cartoon Network – before being liberated by us as compositor / animator on the forthcoming How to Re-Establish a Vodka Empire.
Contact: Simon@optimisticproductions.co.uk
MARTIN PICKLES – ANIMATOR – Martin graduated from the RCA MA Animation course in 2007 and since then has worked as an animation director and 2D animator on a variety of projects, including television advertisements, corporate films, title sequences and short films. Martin’s own film “Like Me, Only Better” was shown at seventy film festivals and won prizes at five. Martin specialises in hand-drawn animation in Flash and on paper. Unusually for animators, Martin also has a first degree in Classics from Oxford University.
Contact: Martin@optimisticproductions.co.uk
View Martins showreel:
MATTHEW WITT – WEB AND DIGITAL COMMUNITY – joined the team on Vodka Empire, working on varous websites for the project. Matt excels at creating dymanic websites, transforming the rather inaccessible sites into something which lives and breathes and changes on a daily on basis. Matt loves social media and also runs the online arts magazine, Creaturemag.com.
Contact: Matt@optimisticproductions.co.uk
GINA BOREHAM – EVENTS AND PUBLIC RELATIONS – Gina Boreham is primarily a live events producer with a special penchant for East European Gypsy Jazz, and manager of the excellent band Dunajska Kapeleye. Gina helped to organise the Optimistic Immigrants nights at The East End Film Festival and The Jewish Museum which built up a scene around the Vodka Empire, and she’s now bringing her gregarious talents to the vodka itself, acting effectively as distributor, setting up meetings as well as throwing herself into organising a fresh slate of events.
Contact: Gina@optimisticproductions.co.uk
BRIT COWAN – WRITER AND RESEARCHER – After studying film at Columbia University in New York City, Brit worked long hours on such television shows as 30 Rock and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Growing tired of working for shows that win so many awards, she moved to London to get her masters in Media and Communications from LSE. In her free time, she writes screenplays and has watched every film on IMDB’s Top 250.
Contact: Brit@optimisticproductions.co.uk
