Backyard Productions has added New Zealand-born film director Luke Huxham to its roster. This marks his first commercial representation in the U.S. Based in Tokyo for the past 15 years and now living in Los Angeles, Huxham has been directing commercials and narrative documentaries worldwide for automotive brands including Porsche, Ferrari, Ford and Mercedes-Benz.
With a variety of work spanning various genres of film including automotive and people-first storytelling, Huxham possesses a deep understanding of his subjects and their nuances. His work has been featured on streamers such as Amazon Prime Video and Hulu, and has garnered over a hundred million views online with his viral projects, including his film Ukraine. Pretty Cool Place, which was selected as a Vimeo staff pick.
Huxham began his career as a DP by combining his childhood love for film with his hobby for cars. Using this as a springboard, he gave himself four years to learn the intricacies of being a DP before beginning to work on campaigns which allowed him to work as a director and DP simultaneously. This experience led to the realization that his true passion lay in directing. Prior to moving to Los Angeles this year, Huxham focused his energy on running a successful production company in Tokyo and directing overseas projects.
Further showcasing Huxham’s impressive portfolio in the automotive world, his work on the BMW Dune taxi project was a standout achievement for the director due to the sheer scale of the shoot. Filmed in Liwa Oasis and starring actress Madelyn Cline from Outer Banks, the project was a technical feat. Overcoming everything from drone-based terrorist attacks during the shoot, to wrangling the cowboys that drove their BMW X5 SUVs on two wheels, the project highlights Huxham’s ability to bring a certain level of emotion and energy to his subjects.
Huxham’s first job since arriving in the U.S. was for the brand new Corvette, a project that took place in Utah with Local Boy productions. It was through a friend on this project that a relationship with Backyard was formed. The fast-paced commercial showcases the dynamic environments of Utah traversing between snow deserts and mountains.
Outside the automotive space, Huxham favors people-first narratives, be it short-form passion projects shot in Ukraine to award-winning documentaries filmed while surrounded by the world’s largest waves in Nazare, Portugal. Keen to expand his creative horizons, Huxham is looking forward to branching out of the high-paced automotive films he’s known for and further into narrative with the support of Backyard.
Rich Schafler, Backyard’s EP/ head of sales, commented, “Luke is a great fit for Backyard as he joins our team with an amazing body of dynamic cutting edge work in the automotive and visual storytelling space. Luke’s truly committed to evolving and creating unique cutting edge content and he was seeking to partner with a company that he could collaborate with and who would help source directing opportunities in the U.S. market.”
Huxham said, “In the past, I’ve had to do everything for myself for as long as I can remember, and I’ve always found a way to get things done. But now, with the incredible support I have from Backyard, I can only see myself going further. I can’t imagine a world where I’m not directing my own feature film, so I’m looking forward to going down this rabbit hole and exploring as many opportunities as I can with Backyard in the future.”
Luke adds: “It was at a Corvette job in Utah that I was introduced to Backyard through a friend. Signing with a rep wasn’t at the top of my list, but after meeting with Rich and Kevin [B. Allodi, Backyard president/CEO] over a coffee, we had a really great chat, and everything that was discussed just seemed really honest and down to earth. Even if the timing felt sudden, my gut told me I would have been silly to ignore this opportunity.”
