Michael Wohl - Director Bio

bio

writing samples

"Wohl's screen future looks bright!"	"A J.G. Ballard for the information age"
-Variety	-Victoria Film Festival

Although best known as one of the original designers of Apple's Emmy™ award winning Final Cut Pro software, Michael Wohl is also an award-winning filmmaker. His film work garnered much praise:
	“ An arresting debut feature probing familiar ideas with a fresh eye…Wohl’s screen future looks bright”– VARIETY “ Crafted with assurance and panache!” – FILM THREAT “ Wohl has the makings of a J.G. Ballard for the information age. Want is a fantastic, fun and frantic ride through the modern day crush of digital desire!” –VIFVF “ Refreshing, funny and brilliant! An original and exciting story told in a way that not only kept me engaged, but fascinated me, made me laugh and made me cry.” BAY AREA CASTING NEWS
His most recent film, Artistic License, has played at more than 20 film festivals, winning awards at ten of them, including Best Comedy at Austin Film Festival, Sedona Film Festival, the New York Television Festival and others. That film continues to be invited to film festivals around the world and receive wonderful reviews. Prior to that, Wohl wrote, produced, directed, and edited WANT , an “edgy, stylized, and thought provoking” film about dot-com mania and sex addiction set during the internet boom of 1999. The film has played at festivals including Cinequest Film Festival, Newport Beach Film Festival, IFP Central Standard Film Festival, Victoria Independent Film Festival and the Canned Film Festival. An earlier film, Theatereality won the coveted CINE Eagle award and played in many festivals around the world including Valladolid, Manchester, and Mill Valley Film Festival.
Michael got his training at Northeastern University and San Francisco State University, achieving a B.A. Cum Laude from the latter in 1992. He then went on to work as an editor, video tech and assistant director at Film and Video Service, a corporate video facility specializing in environmental projects and training films for companies like Chevron and British Petroleum.
After getting recruited to test digital editing and special effects software for Adobe Systems (Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop) He was the second person hired to develop the next generation of editing software, Final Cut Pro for Macromedia. His role was to provide the real world experience and input to guide the engineers to create a tool that could please both professional editors as well as novices.In 1998, the team was purchased by Apple Computer where he went on to design and produce all of the demo and training material used for the software. Final Cut Pro won an Emmy Award in 2002 and has grown to be one of the most widely used tools in the filmmaking industry.
During this time, Wohl continued to hone his filmmaking skills by doing freelance editing, writing, directing gigs including music videos, short films, documentaries, and several corporate pieces for Apple, Macromedia and Hobie Cat Sailboats. To further develop his directing ability, he studied acting with the Bennett Theater Lab a 3-year intensive program focusing on Stanislavski’s method of physical action. Throughout this time, he grew to be one of the world’s leading experts on digital filmmaking. In 1998 he founded Bare Witness Productions, an award-winning ensemble of actors and filmmakers using improvisation to create short films for the internet. That group’s first feature film IPO premiered at the Slamdance film festival in 2004 and has gone on to win several awards.
Additionally he has written several books and training DVDs on editing, digital filmmaking, and special effects techniques. In addition he has taught classes on those subjects at institutions including AFI, UCLA, San Francisco State University, University of Georgia, South by Southwest, DV Expo, MacWorld, Cinequest Film Festival as well as countless seminars around the world.