Director Dana Brown, whose credits include the noted surfing documentary Step Into Liquid, has come aboard the roster of Caviar for commercials. This marks the first career spot representation for Brown whose latest long-form credit is Highwater, a feature-length documentary chronicling the 2005 Triple Crown of Surfing on Hawaii’s North Shore. Highwater is slated for release this fall.
Brown’s brings a distinctive filmmaking lineage to Caviar, which maintains offices in Venice, Brussels and Amsterdam. His father is Bruce Brown who helmed the classic surf film, Endless Summer. Dana Brown has collaborated with his father on several projects, including Summer‘s sequels, Endless Summer II and Endless Summer Revisited. Dana Brown directed the latter.
Dana Brown grew up in Dana Point, Calif., and first started making films with his friends at the age of eight. Throughout his teens, he assisted his father on film shoots and later collaborated with him in a more official capacity as a writer, producer and editor on Endless Summer II and Endless Summer Revisited. Dana Brown eventually ventured out on his own with over 50 sports-related productions including the Emmy-nominated series, Surfer’s Journal, and feature-length documentary, Dust to Glory, focused on the Baja 1000 (multi-vehicle race).
Brown’s success with Liquid and Dust to Glory has firmly established him in the non-fiction adventure film genre. “I have always been interested in people and their various obsessions. People with obsessions that might kill them, be it surfing or wartime journalism, are the most fascinating of all,” Brown observed.
Ron Cicero and Bo Clancey Launch Production House 34North
Executive producers Ron Cicero and Bo Clancey have teamed to launch 34North. The shop opens with a roster which includes accomplished directors Jan Wentz, Ben Nakamura Whitehouse, David Edwards and Mario Feil, as well as such up-and-coming filmmakers as Glenn Stewart and Chris Fowles. Nakamura Whitehouse, Edwards, Feil and Fowles come over from CoMPANY Films, the production company for which Cicero served as an EP for the past nearly five years. Director Wentz had most recently been with production house Skunk while Stewart now gains his first U.S. representation. EP Clancey was freelance producing prior to the formation of 34North. He and Cicero have known each other for some 25 years, recently reconnecting on a job directed by Fowles. Cicero said that he and Clancey “want to keep a highly focused roster where talent management can be one on one--where we all share in the directors’ success together.” Clancey also brings an agency pedigree to the new venture. “I started at Campbell Ewald in accounts, no less,” said Clancey. “I saw firsthand how much work agencies put in before we even see a script. You have to respect that investment. These agency experiences really shaped my approach to production--it’s about empathy, listening between the lines, and ultimately making the process seamless.” 34North represents a meeting point--both literally and creatively. Named after the latitude of Malibu, Calif., where the idea for the company was born, it also embraces the power of storytelling. “34North118West was the first GPS-enabled narrative,” Cicero explained. “That blend of art and technology, to captivate an audience, mirrors what we do here--create compelling work, with talented people, harnessing state-of-the-art... Read More