BestFriend, a bicoastal production studio led by executive producer Zak Thornborough, has added Thomas Hefferon to its directorial roster. This marks the first U.S. commercial production house roost for Hefferon who’s also repped by H2 Films in Ireland.
Hefferon is a self-taught director who’s been fascinated with storytelling and film since his youth in Dublin, Ireland. His first short film, The Confession, screened at over 40 festivals around the world (including Tribeca, Palms Springs, and Sundance); it had a national cinema release in Ireland, aired on dozens of TV stations across the world, and garnered over one million hits on YouTube. Since then he’s made three more shorts (The Pool, Switch, and The Heist), all of which received funding by the Irish Film Board. Combined his short films have now played at over 100 major film festivals internationally, winning a number of awards along the way.
Hefferon naturally moved into the commercial and branded content space after being nominated in the Best New Director category at the 2009 Kinsale Shark Awards. This led to him working with Jaguar and Land Rover, and a move to London. There he became known as a go-to director for emotion-driven narratives, working with a range of brands including Panasonic, Jameson, Armstrong International, and Johnson & Johnson.
Hefferon’s first project out of BestFriend is a genre-defying two-spot campaign for Massachusetts Financial Services via FCB Chicago. These spots showcase Hefferon’s deft hand, as he focuses in on the human side of the company. Mirroring mutual investments with the work that musicians do, Hefferon somehow makes financial services empathetic, entertaining, and cool.
