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bio/design
portfolio
john pritchard
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I am a creative director, digital filmmaker, musician and graphic designer who is highly skilled in using Final Cut Pro, Motion and DVD Studio Pro; interactive
design with Flash and Dreamweaver; music recording with Logic; and computer graphic production with Photoshop and Quark XPress. As an instructor, I take a project oriented approach so my students learn by doing and always have something to show by the end of their training.
I made my first digital movie in 1985 using a program called VideoWorks which became the industry standard multimedia software program known as Macromedia Director. I made an entire career working on Director projects prior to 1996 and then switched to web design using Flash and digital video. After the internet boom ended in 2001, I started up the Pritchard School and began making independent movies.
When I was an art major at St. Lawrence University (BA 1983), I became a huge fan of pioneering video
artists, Nam June Paik and Bill Viola, as well as, the eternally playful artist, Keith Haring. As an interactive designer, I have been heavily influenced by the early work of Clement Mok and greatly inspired by the Macintosh design genius of Bill Atkinson. As a filmmaker, I was weaned on Chuck Jones. Most influential has been the Cinemate Verite style of D.A. Pennebaker, the Maysles Brothers, Frederick Wiseman, as well as, the controversial, Jean-Luc Godard. My current heroes are out and out, multi-talented, geniuses: Terry Gilliam, the Coen Brothers, and Robert Rodriguez.
I was born in New York City in 1961. I lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina between the ages of 8 and 12. I have travelled the world and love learning about how people live and express themselves. I made my first movie in 1983 when I was awarded a grant to film in China.
While working on a Master's degree in Education between 1984-85, I taught Native American high school students how to make movies and do computer animation.
In 1986 I moved back to New York City and began producing presentations on Park Avenue for consulting giant, Booz-Allen. Within a year, I launched my first multimedia company, Applied Imagination, with genius programmer, Tom Tafuto. We got some immediate notoriety for creating the first interactive guide to NYC complete with hotels, restaurants, entertainment and subways (and it all fit on a single floppy disk).
As a pioneer in digital video during the early 1990's, I worked with many corporations and advertising firms as an Apple computer consultant. I worked on commercial video CD-rom projects for Microsoft ("Frank Lloyd Wright" and "The Planets"). I also worked on interactive projects with legendary photographers, Michel Tcherevcoff and Douglas Kirkland.
In the late 90's, while working for internet giant, CMGi, I hired a killer team of flash artists and produced an industry first, self-publishing, flash website service for thousands of filmmakers and musicians hosted at iCAST.com.
Since 9/11, my passion for art, education and filmmaking has come together in a full-time effort and I have produced four innovative films (A Part Apart, Unum, NOVUS, & Star Cycles).
As an artist, I must confess that my visual work goes hand in hand with the
music I play as a drummer/keyboardist and the progressive music I listen to such as Weather
Report, Allan
Holdsworth, Bill
Bruford, etc. Music plays such a key role in my creative
life that I have produced a website, jazz-rock.com,
to pay homage to my heroes and instigators of creativity. For me, improvisation and intuition are key aspects of my life and my art.
The past 20 years have been an incredible journey, producing
hundreds of projects running the whole spectrum of filmmaking, art direction
and creative design. My basic philosophy is that great design is all
about great communication.
No matter what the medium, the goal is to always inspire the
audience to take action.
As
I reflect on the origins of launching the Pritchard School,
I am particularly grateful for the ten years I spent working on the
cutting edge of interactive design and digital video in New
York City (1987-97). I was fortunate to work with many outstanding people who helped me fine tune my experise. I am most grateful to Tom Tafuto, Evans Young and Soho design guru, Elie Aliman.
Here are some of the companies I have worked with over the years:
The
following websites and graphics represent some of my favorite
work:
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