SHAUN O’BANION - Writer, Producer, Director
Shaun O’Banion was drawn to the film business from an early age and got his first film industry job as a set P.A. on the Steven Spielberg series “SeaQuest DSV” during the series’ first season after sneaking onto the Universal lot for three months and asking for jobs.
From there, he segued to features (again after sneaking onto a set - this time a James Cameron production) and began to work his way up – first as a Production Assistant, Assistant Director and later, as an assistant to actors such as Academy Award-winner Christopher Walken, Ben Stiller, Courteney Cox and David Arquette and acclaimed filmmakers Joe Wright, Judd Apatow, and Academy Award Nominee Peter Hedges.
His first film as a producer was released in 2008 by E1 Entertainment. That film, DAKOTA SKYE, remained in the Top 100 on Netflix for 5 years and has become a cult hit among teens, a regular topic on social networking sites like Twitter and Tumblr and aired on Showtime, The Movie Channel, ComCast, Time Warner Cable and Hulu.
His second film, GIRLFRIEND, stars Shannon Woodward (HBO's event series Westworld, Fox TV’s Raising Hope), Jackson Rathbone (THE TWILIGHT SAGA) and Golden Globe Nominee Amanda Plummer (THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE, PULP FICTION) along with newcomer Evan Sneider. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2010 and was one of 13 films to sell to a distributor in the first week of the Festival. In 2011, Shaun and his fellow producers won an IFP Gotham Award for the film as well as a host of other awards both internationally and in the U.S.
His most recent film, THE AUTOMATIC HATE, stars Joseph Cross (LINCOLN, MILK), Adelaide Clemens (GATSBY, Sundance Channel series Rectify), Richard Schiff (HBO's Ballers, MAN OF STEEL), Deborah Ann Woll (Netlfix Original's Daredevil, HBO's True Blood) and the late Ricky Jay (HEIST, BOOGIE NIGHTS). The film made its World Premiere at the 2015 SXSW Film Festival before heading to the Seattle International Film Festival, Busan International, Mill Valley (where it won the Jury Award) and others. It was released in N. America by Film Movement in 2016.
A member of the Producers Guild of America, O'Banion has produced national commercials for clients such as EA Sports, The Pepsi Co., HIVE Lighting, and Chevrolet. He has produced two episodes of Day Off with Noah Abrams (featuring celebrity chef Tyler Florence and Skate legend Tony Hawk) for the Planes, Trains & Automobiles Network on the web and on Delta Airlines with 200 million unique views a year, as well as a live event in Los Angeles for The White House, Office of the First Lady (Michelle Obama) alongside J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof and Academy Award-winner Bruce Cohen.
In addition to the above, Shaun is also a screenwriter and script consultant as well as an accomplished public speaker and teacher, having taught filmmaking courses at the Prague Film School, The Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in San Francisco, California, SUNY Oneonta, New York, Metro-Arts High School in Phoenix, Arizona, and South Bay Adult School in Los Angeles, California. He has served on panels at the FIrstglance Film Festival, Hollywood and as both panelist and moderator at Hell's Half Mile FIlm and Music Festival in Bay City, Michigan. In 2014, he was invited to join a panel of distinguished independent filmmakers at The SAG-AFTRA Foundation in Los Angeles (which can be viewed below).
As a screenwriter he is repped by Sarah Arnott at Zero Gravity Management.
With a number of projects in various stages solely under the Ravenwood Films banner and others he'll produce with partners like Broad Reach Films, as well as a new podcast (CHARACTER) which debuted in the fall of 2021, he expects the next few years to be extremely busy.
1/2022