I've been on both sides of "action."
Years directing for agencies and clients, backed by a lifetime on set as an actor, writer, and filmmaker.
For most of my career, I've been standing in the correct spot on the mark, hitting my line on the third beat, watching a hundred different directors handle a room — from three feet away, with a boom overhead and a client watching from video village. I've seen what makes a set tense and what makes it fast. I've seen directors who get a real performance out of thirty seconds of product copy, and directors who never figure out how.
I've directed real client commercials. I've also spent just as long standing where the actor stands — the part most directors never get.
The commercial work isn't a side door — agencies have been hiring me for years. TBWA\Chiat\Day, Wieden+Kennedy, Leo Burnett, BBDO, McCann Erickson, and Saatchi & Saatchi, among others, have put me in front of clients like Dell, Microsoft, Boomi, and Delta Scientific. I know how a production runs from an art director's side of the table — what they actually need from a director on set, what makes a shoot day stay on schedule, and how to protect a concept through the shoot instead of letting it drift.
Comedy is where I started and it's still the throughline. I founded the sketch troupe McFwap, and when the surviving members of Monty Python wanted their unproduced sketches staged, they personally invited me to direct them. That's the same muscle a thirty-second spot needs — timing, a premise landing on the right beat, a performer who trusts the person calling the shot.
Alongside the sketch work, I've built an actual filmmaking career — writing, directing, and acting across television and independent film, with work on Bosch: Legacy and Star Wars: Tales of the Empire, and network credits for HBO, FX, CBS, and Fox. I wrote, directed, and starred in the feature noir Trouble Is My Business. Right now I'm directing an independent sci-fi comedy feature, LeapFrog, with Anna Faris attached. I run Lumen Actus Productions out of Burbank.
The reel below is the proof — commercials I've directed, sitting next to the film and comedy work that shaped them.