I am Justin Nathanson, American independent filmmaker, artist, and # 1 son. I decided to become a filmmaker so that I could use my talents to express myself, create thoughtful and compelling stories, and to inspire others.
I received quite a thorough education of performing as a child. Spending years studying Method Acting at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute, on stage and in films, I caught the bug for entertaining. I learned about myself, and others, and how life is perceived.
I was also a pretty decent saxophone player. I played first alto in the New York all-city band for 3 years – with concerts at places like Lincoln Center, and Carnegie Hall. Music, for me, is the most honest, most beautiful, pure form of expression.
This led to making films….being able to combine all of the arts that I loved: acting, music, design, writing. After all, a film is a just a combination of all the arts: from set design to wardrobe.
At my first year of film school at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, (SVA) I worked on the film “Pawns” which finished 4th place at the National Student Academy Awards. A year later, while only 19 years old and in my second year of film school, on a dare from my professor, I raised over $75,000 to produce and direct my first motion picture “BURN”. (now on DVD) “BURN” is a 26-year David Lynch-style full-length epic of a Rabbi and a Priest who are identical twins, separated at age 6, living in the opposite ends of small town America unbeknownst to each other.
35 production days, 3 states and 80 reels later, of all the companies that could attach themselves to “BURN”, it was Linda Ellerbee at Nickelodeon (NickNews) that saw what I was doing and provided the free AVID editing for the film, and got Emmy Award winning Greg Paine to teach me the art of the edit. At that point, cutting together hours and hours of raw super-16mm film into a story, I knew that he would forever be an Editor. The film was released in New York at the former church and nightclub Limelight with an audience of 1000+. Soon after, getting my hands on the first ever release of Apple’s Final Cut Pro, I spent every waking second acquiring footage to cut and practice with.
Another year later, still in film school, I was asked to Produce Mr. Paine’s comedy feature “Babyshakes and the Return of Mac Daddy”, a story about a failed writer/bike messenger delivering shady packages to interesting people all over New York City. The film did well, won festival awards, and had a limited release. It is now on DVD, and has a new title “The Jump Off”.
Over the next few years I Produced, Directed and Edited commercials, films, television shows, and music videos in Los Angeles, Miami and New York.
Some of those projects include the Macy’s July 4th live fireworks broadcast, 25th anniversary Rutles DVD, commercials for Estee Lauder, Gatorade, Jeep/Wrangler, Nabisco, Music Video’s for Metallica, Hole and The Black Crowes, TV work for E! with The Howard Stern Show, Comedy Central’s “Beat The Geeks”, The VH-1 Master Producer series, Court TV’s “Stories form the Innocence Project”, Fox Sports Networks “Best Damn Sports Show, Period”, an A&E documentary series for AVON, the feature film’s Blue Vinyl, Melting Planet, and the raw “Watch This” documentary series for the Glass Bead Collective, among many others. For Entertainment Tonight, I spent a month in Lisbon, Portugal, shooting/documenting Ford Models’ ‘Supermodel of the Year” awards, and six months in Hawaii shooting surf contests for ESPN.
I also directed and edited 3 episodic internet-streamed shows, including “DJ Booth”, a how-to DJ show with the foremost DJ’s of the world, “Bachelor Chef”, an early ‘Martha Stewart for college aged kids’, and “This or That”, an irreverent man-on-the-street interview show. I then created ‘Busman’s Holiday”, a 22-minute documentary on his father and a garden he designed and planted on St. Barth’s, which accumulated over 500,000 internet views in 2001. After, commissioned by Phillip Morris, I created 6 art-installations over a year where I filmed, created and designed a multi-media show that became part of the space in art galleries, nightclubs and The Brooklyn Museum.
When I moved to Charleston early 2005, I was hired as the lead editor for a network television teen-drama show, reaching 97 million homes and “Solutions With Jill”, a one minute home-repair segment that broadcasts daily during ABC’s morning news with Nina Sossoman. Justin also edited segments for NASCAR, Animal Tails with Jack Hanna, Exploration with Richard Wiese, and The Home Team, among others.
In early 2006 I launched the nonprofit ChasDOC, inc. to present the one-off Charleston Documentary Film Festival where the best environmental and human rights documentaries can be programmed. http://www.binyahfilm.org/2006/index.html
I soon Directed another documentary, “Bin Yah”, an important film that has found a home on PBS/ETV. www.BinYahFilm.org
All of this has brought me to the current development and creation of the cut company. www.thecutcompany.com
As my company continues to develop more feature films and documentaries, we are creating and publishing commercial content, DVDs, videos, for online distribution (12 DVD Feature Projects in 2007 – 2008 alone).
With web video, we are part of the effort to market and advertise small and major companies, organizations, events, and businesses, helping them flourish and prosper. As print and other forms of traditional advertising become tougher to reach consumers, and it is, online video content is the perfect way to reach, educate, entertain, and drive revenue.
2010 brings several TV and Film Projects into development – we are shooting our first TV pilot of the year “Cast Party” March 22nd in New York City, at Birdland. In addition to a steady flow of commercial advertising work, we have 2 other projects including a major motion picture we are looking to get financed, at the American Film Market this year. http://www.ifta-online.org