Olly Blackburn is a director, screenwriter and writer who lives in South London, not far from the house where William Blake lived.
Olly has directed commercials and music videos, short films and televison as well as writing projects for studios that include New Line and Zentropa. Once upon a time, he used to write journalism for newspapers and magazines.
He learnt his craft at NYU’s Graduate Film Department, which he went to on a Fulbright scholarship. His graduation film, Swallowed, won some awards including NYU’s Martin Scorsese post production award and best film at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. It was one of 9 shorts selected for the Telluride Film Festival. His next short, Wonderful World, played many festivals and won best British film at the Manchester short film festival. He also made Rabbit which was one of a series of one minute films shown on British TV to mark the milennium and won a British Television Advertising craft award.
He's worked as a music video director - credits include Tin Star, Embrace, Six By Seven, 9 Yards and Gomez - nominated for the CADs Best Newcomer. He’s also an experiencced commercials director - credits include Anonymous Learners for BBC Education, which won a CFP Young Directors Award at Cannes; Glastonbury for Radio 1 and Carlsberg spots for the European Cup.
In 2005 he directed the Flying Blind epsisode of the docu-drama series Survivors, script supervised by Paul Abbott and which managed the feat of getting pick of the day in both the Sun and the Guardian.
He also works as a screenwriter. Writing projects include adapting Chris Fowler’s Roofworld (Samuelson Productions/New Line), co-writing The Last Born for director Nils Arden Oplev (Zentropa/New Line/Metronome), The Long Tomorrow for Erik Eger and Vinyan for Fabrice de Welz (Backup films/Film4) – produced in summer 2007, starring Rufus Sewell and Emanuelle Beart.
His own projects as writer-director include real-world thriller Donkey Punch (co-written with David Bloom, produced by WarpX) which was shot in Spring 2007. Unproduced projects include the horror drama Defiance (Little Bird), and comedy-drama Fever.
This site includes director reels for drama, commercials and music videos and password-accessible scripts can be read too.
This website was built by FoxLand/Andrew Fox.