leo Woodhead

Born in the UK and brought up in New Zealand, Leo Woodhead’s commercials career has quickly risen to meteoric heights since it kicked off in 2009. His work reveals a great skill for comic timing and for conveying absurd humour while traversing the genres of performance, cars, stunts and special effects. In less than two years he has directed commercials for major agencies including SAATCHI & SAATCHI – Toyota, Hot Traveller, PUBLICIS MOJO - Hallensteins and DDB – My Sky. Leo’s cinematic influences reach far and wide from Wes Anderson to Terry Gilliam to Martin Scorcese. These influences inform the considerable range evident in his commercials work of which he says: “I love what I do. It is always a challenge to find a new way of telling stories and working on the best way to articulate a project. I like working within the condensed time frame of 30 to 60 seconds. That’s the joy of it – conveying a story in such a short time and striving to make each one unique.” Leo’s work has been selected for Shots 128 and 129 and will be featured in the upcoming Shots New Zealand special edition in April 2012. His work has also featured on Creativity online and multiple selections on bestadsontv.com made Leo the top ranked director on Campaign Brief by January 2012. Leo was a finalist in the running for the inaugural 2011 Shots New Director of the year award and a film craft finalist in the 2011 Cannes Lions. He has also been recognized at Award. Leo first won international acclaim when his short film CARGO, a visceral exploration of smuggling in the Czech Republic, was selected in competition at the prestigious Venice Film Festival in 2007. Cargo then traveled to more than twenty of the worlds best film festivals including London, Telluride, Melbourne, Tribeca and San Sebastian. Leo’s achievement was all the more remarkable as the film was made on a student budget and shot in the Czech republic in the Czech language as part of an international film school exchange. In 2009, Leo shot his first fully funded short, Zero, which was selected for the 2010 Berlin Film Festival. Leo was then handpicked for a special internship to work in New York at Killer Films, run by independent film legend Christine Vachon - Boys Don’t Cry, Happiness, I’m Not There. During this time, Leo worked in both development and production, gaining an understanding of the independent industry and solidifying a relationship with a premiere film company.