The short version: I direct award-winning commercials, music videos, and television, across many genres, styles, and techniques.
My dual background as a screenwriter and visual artist has inspired my sweet spot of combining inventive, larger-than-life visuals with nuanced characters, developed narratives, and grounded humanity.
My work has amassed more than 4 billion YouTube hits, taken me to 40 countries, and given me the opportunity to collaborate with some of the world’s best artists, musicians, brands, actors, athletes, and creators.
The way-too-long-version: I started my diverse writing and directing career in television development, fresh out of UCLA – writing for a few series and TV movies before moving to staff writing for a SyFy Channel anthology series. Later, as one of the founding directors of Motion Theory, I spearheaded the company's transformation from a pure design studio into a full-service, concept-to-delivery content creation company, and led the development of a trademark studio approach and style that remixed live action, design, and visual effects in entirely new ways.
This wide-ranging creative experience sometimes makes it challenging to encapsulate my work, but I look at it very simply: I combine high-concept visuals and down-to-earth humanity to create content that engages viewers.
My rejection of the traditional approach of limiting myself to a single genre or style sets me apart as a uniquely versatile director who puts the viewer, characters, and story goals above genre conventions. But far more importantly, it empowers me to actively utilize the strengths and benefits of many genres, styles, and techniques in order to create truly original and surprising content – a critical objective when viewers can reject content with a click or a swipe.
As a result of my innovative hybrid approach -- and my aggressively resourceful production approach -- my work intentionally spans many genres, techniques, styles, and tones. Notable writing and directing projects include Sam Raimi’s hit cable series Spartacus: Blood & Sand, which I also developed and helped to launch; music videos for artists such as Katy Perry, Beck, R.E.M., and Capital Cities; and award-winning commercial campaigns for dozens of major brands across virtually every category – extending even beyond the selected categories on this website.
My awards and honors include an MTV Video Music Award, a Grammy nomination, a People’s Choice Award, and multiple awards from the AICP, D&AD, the Clios, The One Show, Art Directors Club, Siggraph, MVPAs, YouTube, and more. Additionally, I was on Filestage’s 2016 “Best 50 Commercial Directors in the World” list; Boards magazine’s “Directors to Watch” and “Top 10 Directors in Demand” lists; named to Rolling Stone magazine’s “Hot List” as a music video director; and my work has been featured in Wired, Entertainment Weekly, Ad Age, Creativity, Time, The New York Times, CNN, BBC, and many others - while collectively tallying billions of broadcast views and over 3 billion hits on YouTube.
I can be most easily reached at Grady@GradyHall.com. I welcome the chance to share my creative approach and actively collaborate at any stage of development, because I love the hell out of what I do.
.grady