Chris Santucci
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Chris Santucci (born December 13, 1962) is a film producer, commercial photographer, cameraman, and Director of Photography currently residing in Buffalo, NY. His forte is low budget Indie film production and he specializes in working with first time directors, most recently Aaron Doolittle who wrote and directed the feature film Bonfire, Falls.
Chris started his life as the son of a commercial photographer, Richard Santucci, who published a book with Amphoto in 1970 entitled Fine Figure Photography. After spending his formative years hanging around his father's Manhattan photography studio and learning the ropes, the whole family moved to Buffalo, New York where Chris eventually went to McKinley Highschool, enrolled in the advertising art program, and soon thereafter Villa Maria College where he developed the beginnings of his visual style, having work published in the now defunct New Look magazine run by Bob Guccione, Jr., and showing work in the Albright Knox Art Gallery. He received an AAS degree in photography after briefly considering a shift into graphic design and cites photography instructor James Jipson as having the greatest influence on his artistic sensibilities to date.
Hired straight from college, Chris worked for 5 years at one of Buffalo's premier commercial photography studios, Collignon-Jarosz, Ltd., garnering many awards for his photography from local and regional advertising clubs and honing his skills as a fashion and portrait photographer. In 1990, one of his photographs was accepted by Graphis Photography, a juried annual published in Zurich, Switzerland. Chris decided to move to Los Angeles and seek work as a freelance photographer and assistant. Soon after landing in Los Angeles, Chris was hired by William Hawkes as a first assistant and occasional photographer shooting images for Playboy Video, Honda Automobiles, and Builders Square. It was here that Chris was initially exposed to digital photography as Hawkes was testing Eastman Kodak's very first digital SLR camera at the time, the DCS 100.
Chris returned to Buffalo in 1992 and soon regained freelance status as a photographer once again garnering many awards for his photography from local and regional ad clubs as well as having another piece accepted in 1995 by the Graphis Alternative Photography juried annual. At this time he was ushered into the world of commercial film production by his best friend and soon became an unofficial partner in a commercial film production company, B-HIVE Productions, based in Boston, NY near Buffalo. B-HIVE Productions produced local, regional and national television commercials for such clients as Goodyear, Channellock Tools, and Marine Midland Bank (now HSBC) as well as Eastman Kodak's Cine Update 5 film demos.
During the mid to late 90's, Chris delved into video and film as a shooter, acting as Director of Photography on his first commercial for the Buffalo Zoo in 1995. Since that time, he has immersed himself in film and video, with a particular interest in narrative filmmaking as a producer and Director of Photography. Since 2001, Chris has photographed 5 feature films, music videos for Robby Takac's Good Charamel Records, scores of commercials, and a number of short films, the most notable, Tiny Magic which he co-produced and which was accepted into the Taos Talking Pictures Film Festival in 2003.
Currently, Chris operates his business, Santucci Pictures, and divides his time between writing, editing, producing, and cinematography.
