Jeff Bollow
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Jeff Bollow (born September 25, 1971 in Santa Monica, California) is an actor, writer, director, producer, author, public speaker, and film festival organizer. In 1996, after ten years of moderate success as an actor in his native Los Angeles, Bollow migrated to New Zealand, and then to Australia, where he founded the Screenplay Development Centre, authored the book Writing FAST: How to Write Anything with Lightning Speed, and produced and directed the ATOM Award-winning Making Fantastic Short Films for schools, before returning to New Zealand to co-found the Big Mountain Short Film Festival and co-author the iLife 08 book for Apple and Peachpit Press.
[edit] Career history
Bollow began acting as a teenager, appearing in dozens of film, television, stage, and commercial productions, including Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, Ann Jillian, Columbo, Pink Lightning and Gabriel's Fire, as well as television commercials for Kellogg's Pop-Tarts, Doritos, Visa Card, and several others.
During this time, he also did a wide assortment of production work, starting with Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's first music video Brother for Sale, before working for companies such as Universal Pictures, Roger Corman's Concorde/New Horizons, and several music video companies. He eventually began making his own short films, including the IFC New Filmmaker Award-winning 1995 short "The Duel".
In 1996, Bollow moved to New Zealand, where he continued acting, with minor appearances in Shortland Street, Lost Valley, Young Hercules (as an ADR actor), and several others. While in New Zealand, he wrote 6,000 Miles from Hollywood, an independent feature film project co-produced with Billy Milionis in Sydney on a shoestring budget, a project which was abandoned in post-production after seven years.
Bollow created the Screenplay Development Centre in 2000[1], which presented screenwriting workshops and seminars throughout Australia, New Zealand and internationally.
In 2004, Bollow designed a systematic approach to the writing process he dubbed "the F.A.S.T. System", an acronym for Focus, Apply, Strengthen, Tweak. He authored a book called Writing FAST: How to Write Anything with Lightning Speed, which was briefly an Amazon.com bestseller in May 2005.
In 2006, he produced and directed an acclaimed educational DVD for primary and secondary schools called Making Fantastic Short Films, winner of the prestigious 2007 ATOM Award for Best Instructional/Training Resource.[2] and MFSF was also nominated for Best Primary Education Resource and Best Secondary Education Resource.[2]
Bollow is co-founder of the Big Mountain Short Film Festival, held annually in Ohakune, New Zealand. He has directed television for New Zealand's Pacific Beat St television series, and co-authored a book for Apple and Peachpit Press on iMovie 08 video editing software.[3] He was invited to the jury of the Kuala Lumpur International Film Festival in December 2007.
[edit] References
- ^ Mitchell, James. "Natural Born Teacher", FILMINK, January/February 2005, pp. 37. Retrieved on 2008-1-28.
- ^ a b 2007 EnhanceTV ATOM Awards Finalists. Retrieved on 2008-1-28.
- ^ Apple Training Series: iLife 08.
