Brendan Bellomo is one of the cutting edge filmmaking stars of the new generation of film school graduates. He is already a multi award-winning writer/producer/director manifesting vision years beyond his NYU Tisch School of the Arts degree. While at NYU, Brendan wrote, produced and directed a cast and crew of 200 students and professionals from 11 different countries all of whom he convinced to volunteer on his film "Bohemibot" a live action sci-fi short that won the 2009 Student Academy Award.
His films have screened in over 30 festivals, including Palm Springs International ShortFest, Cannes Short Film Corner, Indie Spirit Film Festival, Oxford International Film Festival, Hollywood East Film Festival, and Dragon*Con. His 8 short films have garnered numerous awards including Best Student Film (Breckenridge Film Festival), Best Director (HDFEST), Best Short Film (Real to Reel Film Festival), Best Sci-Fi and Best Visual Effects (Beverly Hills Shorts Festival), Wasserman Award Finalist (NYU's First Run Film Festival), Best Student Film (Hawaii's Big Island Film Festival), and the Oliver Stone Screenwriting Award nomination at NYU.
Brendan got an early start when his high school film, "got nice?", was nominated for a Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Only a few years thereafter, as an NYU sophomore, he was selected over juniors and seniors out of 800 total students to receive the honor of having his animated short, "Dream Sweeper", screened at Lincoln Center with the NYU Symphony Orchestra performing an original score. He was invited to join The National Board of Review as a voting member after he became a 2009 Student Grant Awardee for "Bohemibot". The NBR additionally honored his film with the Marion Carter Green Award for Best Original Score.
Brendan is now ready to lite-up the music video world having recently directed EMI/Mute Limited's pop rock band "A Place to Bury Strangers" with tens of thousands of production value for literally less than ten thousand dollars. In addition to his SFX genius, his filmmaking ability to direct actors and non-actors alike, was a major attribute in helping the video receive far more broad exposure than expected.
Brendan worked as Visual Effects Supervisor on the upcoming feature sci-fi dramas "SOL" and "End of the Line" (starring Jon Polito and Mark Margolis) and as well as the indie feature comedy "Trophy Kids" (starring David Gallagher and Ryan Eggold). He also worked as lead digital animator on the award-winning music video short "The Spirit of Gravity", which screened in 30+ film festivals. Just a year out of school and Brendan serves as a guest lecturer by invitation at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
He has already started to develop his brand as a commercial director having recently directed an ad featuring the Discovery/TLC show, "American Chopper" for client Burger King to air on the Cartoon Network. Also notably, Brendan just completed directing, producing and co-writing a promotional short "Somewhere Else" for the industry's preeminent high-speed camera - the Phantom Flex. Previous Phantom cameras were used to shoot slow-motion sequences in "Inception" and "The Hurt Locker". He was the first director entrusted to shoot with the new Flex camera system - currently the only operational prototype in the world. The film won the 2011 ICG Emerging Cinematographer's Award.
This fall Brendan will be teaching the very first film VFX course offered at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. He designed the class, called "Visual Effects and Compositing", to further enable collaboration between the animation and live-action departments.
Now the feature filmmaking world awaits his feature directing debut, the sci-fi romantic adventure "Blue Star", currently in development.