L & F Distibutors

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ABOUT ROSS The short version: The long version: I was born in New York City and got my start in the movie business at age 11 by acting in nationally broadcast television commercials and doing print work for various magazines and newspapers. I attended Weist-Barron, a school specializing in acting for commercials and television programming, and soon thereafter joined the Screen Actors Guild. From 16 to 18, I attended improvisation classes at One Night At The Improv and performed in numerous theatrical productions. At 17, I went to Washington & Lee University to study the history of filmmaking. At 20, I attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and trained in Shakespearian acting, including Elizabethan dance, singing, and stage combat. I attended NYU the next year to study filmmaking—not only did NYU cover the practical challenges of writing, filming, editing, and sound mixing, but also various theories of filmmaking in Hollywood films, French New Wave films and other trends. At college, I was taught about narrative film by Bill Cipolla, now Dean of NYU. In 1991, I graduated from The American University of Paris with a Bachelor of Arts in European Cultural Studies. All throughout college, I had been passionate about writing screenplays, but pursued a career in graphic design at W Fashion Europe, the European version of Fairchild Publication’s Women’s Wear Daily. I did graphic design from 1991–2000 in Paris, New York, London, Sacramento, and San Francisco. In London, I was responsible for designing all job ads at the BBC, and in San Francisco, I was responsible for all collateral for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. In 2000, I attended Springboard, a highly-competitive fast track program to teach design, production and programming for the internet. Later that same year, I joined the Film Arts Foundation in San Francisco to attend lectures on the art and craft of filmmaking. While in Sacramento in 1999, I had also been a member of the Northern California Writers & Artists group, which invited guest lecturers like James Dallasandro, William C. Martell, and many other industry leaders like entertainment attorneys, telemarketing moguls, etc. In 2001, I shot my first short film Metronome with Jena Starkes, an independent writer/director (Heaven-O) and Carole Starkes, a former script supervisor under Robert Altman. Metronome was met with critical acclaim at its San Francisco premiere and, in 2002, I was asked to do story consultation on Curtis Lim’s romantic comedy, The Cleaning Lady. In 2003, after years of web and print design freelance work in advertising, I returned to Sacramento and got back into filmmaking by writing screenplays and doing Production Assistant jobs. On one feature film, I had so much more practical and theoretical knowledge about filmmaking than all the other P.A.’s that I was swiftly promoted to Unit Production Manager. Through a series of fateful circumstances, the 1st A.D. was fired and I became 1st A.D., and—when the Director quit over artistic differences—I unexpectedly found himself directing my first feature film.

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