Andrew Douglas

ANDREW DOUGLAS

Born in the U.K., Andrew Douglas is a photographer and filmmaker. He earned a degree in fine arts and began his career in 1975 as a photographic assistant to Snowdon, an established photographer. For the next 10 years, Douglas worked as a professional photographer in the music and publishing industry. In 1985, he went into partnership with his brother, Stuart, working as the Douglas Brothers. They marketed a very individual style of photography and for the next five years worked solidly for the magazine, publishing, music and advertising industries on both sides of the Atlantic. Their work was regularly exhibited in leading galleries in New York and London. Magazines such as Esquire, The Face, New York Times Magazine, Sight and Sound, and Premiere frequently commissioned them. In addition, they worked on advertising campaigns for Adidas, Lee Jeans, London Transport, EMI, and Faber & Faber.

In 1991, the Douglas Brothers began directing music videos and then television commercials. Their clients included Pepe Jeans, Hyundai, Heineken, and the Scottish Tourist Board. In addition, they were also responsible for directing and shooting over 20 commercials for Adidas, including the 1996 Olympics Campaign, starring athletes such as Donovan Bailey, Steffi Graf and Muhammad Ali.

Douglas began directing on his own in 1997, working on a steady stream of major commissions for clients including Nike, Citroën, Equitable Life, Cerruti, American West Airlines, Volvo, United Airlines, Merrill Lynch, Chrysler, Sheraton, Minolta, Coca-Cola, Audi, Ford, Lexus, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, Verizon and Vittel (featuring David Bowie). Douglas became one of the top commercial directors in the world and was nominated as best commercial director 2004 by the Directors Guild of America.

He eventually transferred his visual sensibilities and story-telling instincts to documentary filmmaking. In 2003, Douglas completed Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, a road documentary about "Alt" country singer Jim White. It was commissioned by BBC TV's Arena and filmed on a drive through the South in the U.S.A. Douglas won the Royal Television Society's 2004 award for Best Cinematography for non-fiction films, as well as the Documentary Award at the 2004 Seattle International Film Festival.

Douglas made his feature directorial debut with the 2005 remake of The Amityville Horror, which was based on a true story. In preparing to make the film, Douglas watched The Shining (1980) again, but this time as a storyteller rather than a spectator, as well as a lot of Wes Craven films. In addition to Western films, he looked at a lot of Japanese, Chinese and Korean horror films for inspiration on scare techniques.

Filmography:

The Amityville Horror (2005)
Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus (2003)