Jeff Bollow

Last updated

Jeff Bollow
Born (1971-09-25) September 25, 1971 (age 53)
Occupation(s)Director, writer, producer, author, public speaker
Years active1986–present
Awards ATOM Award
2007
Website http://www.jeffbollow.com

Jeff Bollow (born September 25, 1971 in Santa Monica, California) is an actor, writer, director, producer, author, public speaker, and film festival organizer. He is the author of Writing FAST: How to Write Anything with Lightning Speed, the producer/director of the ATOM Award-winning Making Fantastic Short Films, and the founder of Australia's Screenplay Development Centre. In May 2015, he delivered the TED Talk "Expand Your Imagination Exponentially" at TEDxDocklands in Melbourne, Australia.

Contents

Biography

Early career

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Bollow began acting as a teenager, appearing in dozens of film, television, stage, and commercial productions, including Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead , Ann Jillian , Columbo , Pink Lightning and Gabriel's Fire , as well as television commercials for Kellogg's Pop-Tarts, Doritos, Visa, and several others.

During this time, he also did a wide assortment of production work, starting with Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's first music video Brother for Sale, before working for companies such as Universal Pictures, Roger Corman's Concorde/New Horizons, and several music video companies. He eventually began making his own short films, including the IFC New Filmmaker Award-winning 1995 short "The Duel".

Writer and speaker

In 1996, Bollow moved to New Zealand, where he continued acting, with minor appearances in Shortland Street, Lost Valley, Young Hercules (as an ADR actor), and several others. While in New Zealand, he wrote 6,000 Miles from Hollywood, an independent feature film co-produced with Billy Milionis in Sydney, Australia on a shoestring budget, a project which was abandoned in post-production after seven years.

Unable to find commercially viable screenplays in Australia to develop, Bollow launched the Screenplay Development Centre in 2000, [1] which presented screenwriting workshops and seminars throughout Australia, New Zealand and internationally.

In 2004, Bollow designed a systematic approach to the writing process he dubbed "the FAST System", an acronym for Focus, Apply, Strengthen, Tweak. He authored a book called Writing FAST: How to Write Anything with Lightning Speed, which was briefly an Amazon.com bestseller in May 2005.

In 2009, Bollow launched a comprehensive, 10-month online screenplay development system called FAST Screenplay, an expansion of his earlier FAST System.

On May 3, 2015, he delivered the TED Talk "Expand Your Imagination Exponentially" at TEDxDocklands in Melbourne, Australia. [2]

Director

Eager to reignite his directing career, Bollow produced and directed Making Fantastic Short Films, a widely praised educational DVD for primary and secondary schools, and winner of the prestigious 2007 ATOM Award for Best Instructional/Training Resource. [3] MFSF was also nominated for Best Primary Education Resource and Best Secondary Education Resource. [3]

Bollow went on to direct several episodes of Pacific Beat St, a television series for TV3 in New Zealand, and the full-length play Five Women Wearing the Same Dress , the inaugural production of the PGT Theatre in Sydney.

Film festival organizer

With business partner Bret Gibson, Bollow was co-founder of the Big Mountain Short Film Festival in Ohakune, New Zealand, and served as festival director and host for its first two years.

Other works

Bollow was a co-author of Apple Training Series: iLife 08, a book for Apple and Peachpit Press, for which he wrote the chapters on the iMovie 08 consumer video editing software. [4]

He was invited to the jury of the Kuala Lumpur International Film Festival in 2007, and returned to deliver his Making Movies Outside Hollywood seminar in 2008. He appeared onstage to present the award for Best North American Film.

He is currently in Los Angeles writing a new book entitled Phenomenal: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy and a related website called The Phenomenal Experience.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrew Niccol</span> New Zealand screenwriter, producer and film director (born 1964)

Andrew Niccol is a New Zealand screenwriter, producer, and director. He wrote and directed Gattaca (1997), Simone (2002), Lord of War (2005), In Time (2011), The Host (2013), and Good Kill (2014). He wrote and co-produced The Truman Show, which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and won him the BAFTA Award in the same category. His high-concept science fiction films tend to explore social, cultural and political issues; artificial realities, simulations and the male gaze are frequent themes in his work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jane Campion</span> New Zealand film director, screenwriter and producer

Dame Elizabeth Jane Campion is a New Zealand filmmaker. She is best known for writing and directing the critically acclaimed films The Piano (1993) and The Power of the Dog (2021), for which she has received two Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards. Campion was appointed a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (DNZM) in the 2016 New Year Honours, for services to film.

Harry Alan Sinclair is a New Zealand film director, writer and actor. In his early career he was an actor and member of The Front Lawn, a musical theatre duo. He went on to write and direct several short films, a TV series and three feature films. He is best known for his role as Isildur in the first scenes of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David S. Goyer</span> American filmmaker, novelist, and comic book writer

David Samuel Goyer is an American filmmaker, novelist, and comic book writer. He is best known for writing the screenplays for several superhero films, including Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (1998), the Blade trilogy (1998–2004), Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy (2005–2012), Man of Steel (2013), and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016). He has also directed four films: Zig Zag (2002), Blade: Trinity (2004), The Invisible (2007), and The Unborn (2009). He is the creator of the science fiction television series Foundation which is loosely based upon the Foundation series written by Isaac Asimov.

The ATOM Awards are a group of awards offered to Australian and New Zealand "professionals, educators and students", honoring achievements in the making of film, television, multimedia, and from 2007 multi-modal productions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Justin Lin</span> Taiwanese-American filmmaker (born 1971)

Justin Lin is a Taiwanese-American film and television director, producer, and screenwriter. His films have grossed over $3 billion USD worldwide as of March 2017. He is best known for his directorial work on Better Luck Tomorrow (2002), the Fast & Furious franchise from The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006) to Fast & Furious 6 (2013) and F9 (2021), and Star Trek Beyond (2016). He is also known for his work on television programs like Community, and True Detective.

The Big Mountain Short Film Festival is a short film festival based in Ohakune, New Zealand designed to encourage and celebrate creative short film making and storytelling. Entry is free and open to filmmakers internationally, who are encouraged to use maximum creativity on minimum budget. In addition to screening short films, the festival also features professional guest speakers offering tips and techniques on an assortment of topics of particular interest to low and no-budget filmmakers.

thedownlowconcept is a production company and creative collective based in Auckland, New Zealand, specializing in producing comedy for film, radio and television. It was formed in 2002 by Jarrod Holt, Ryan Hutchings and Nigel McCulloch, and have since frequently collaborated with actor and comedian Josh Thomson. They are notable for their quirky, irreverent, and sometimes controversial comedic style.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chris Noonan</span> Australian filmmaker and actor (born 1952)

Chris Noonan is an Australian filmmaker and actor. He is best known for the family film Babe (1995), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

<i>Writing FAST</i> 2004 non-fiction book by Jeff Bollow

Writing FAST: How to Write Anything with Lightning Speed is a non-fiction book by Jeff Bollow, first published in Australia in 2004, which briefly became a best-seller on the Amazon.com charts in 2005.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leanne Pooley</span> New Zealand-Canadian filmmaker

Leanne Pooley ONZM is a Canadian filmmaker based in Auckland, New Zealand. Pooley was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, she immigrated to New Zealand in the mid-1980s and began working in the New Zealand television and film industry before moving to England where she worked for many of the world's top broadcasters. She returned to New Zealand in 1997 and started the production company Spacific Films. Her career spans more than 25 years and she has won numerous international awards. Leanne Pooley was made a New Zealand Arts Laureate in 2011 and an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the New Year's Honours List 2017. She is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Kuala Lumpur International Film Festival is a film festival held in Kuala Lumpur. With the aim to promote the best in Asian cinema as well as unearth new Asian filimmaking talent, the 1st Kuala Lumpur International Film Festival was organized on the International Film Festival Circuit on 22 April 2001.

Vickie Gest is a documentary and drama producer from Brisbane.

Harry's War is an Australian short film. It is written and directed by Richard Frankland produced by John Foss and Richard Franklin and stars David Ngoombujarra. It was broadcast nationally on SBS and ABC TV.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">L.A. Comedy Shorts Film Festival</span>

The L.A. Comedy Shorts Film Festival (LACS) is an annual film festival held in the spring in Los Angeles, California. LACS programs short films exclusively in the comedy genre, and is the largest festival of its kind in the United States. During the four-day event, between 60-90 comedy short films from around the world are screened at the festival's main venue in Downtown Los Angeles, with additional industry panels and parties taking place at various locations around the city. The festival culminates on the final night with a red carpet awards ceremony, where winning filmmakers and screenwriters are honored and the "Commie" award is presented to a comedy industry notable for career achievement and "excelling in achieving outstanding comedical achievements in the field of comedy excellence."

Sima Urale is a New Zealand filmmaker. Her films explore social and political issues and have been screened worldwide. She is one of the few Polynesian film directors in the world with more than 15 years in the industry. Her accolades include the Silver Lion for Best Short Film at the Venice Film Festival for O Tamaiti (1996).

Philippa "Pip" Karmel is an Australian filmmaker. As a film editor, she has worked exclusively with director Scott Hicks in a notable collaboration from 1988 through 2007; their work together includes the 1996 film Shine. She has directed and written several films, including Me Myself I (2000), which was released internationally.

John V. Soto is an Australian film director and co-founder of Filmscope Entertainment, a production company based in Western Australia that focuses on commercial genre films.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martyn Park</span> Australian filmmaker

Martyn Park is an Australian writer, director, and Health & Training Coach.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">April Phillips</span> Writer, producer, singer living in New Zealand

April Phillips is an actress, writer, singer, director and producer of film and theatre. She was born in Coventry, England, but resides in Wellington, New Zealand. Her production company, Godiva Productions Limited, was named after the Lady Godiva legend of her hometown of Coventry.

References

  1. Mitchell, James (January–February 2005). "Natural Born Teacher". Vol. 7, no. 19. FILMINK. p. 37. Archived from the original on September 27, 2009. Retrieved January 19, 2009.
  2. Bollow, Jeff (May 2015). "Expand Your Imagination Exponentially". TEDxDocklands.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
  3. 1 2 "2007 EnhanceTV ATOM Awards Finalists". Archived from the original on February 6, 2009. Retrieved January 19, 2009.
  4. "Apple Training Series: iLife 08".