Grady Hall is an American director of commercials and music videos, as well as a screenwriter, producer, and director of one-hour television series.
He has directed music videos for Beck, Katy Perry, and Capital Cities, for which he received a Grammy nomination, and won an MTV Video Music Award.
Hall began his career working at Warner Bros. in syndicated television. He later became a development executive for television producer Douglas S. Cramer and was also a staff writer[1] on The Outer Limits for SyFy, which filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Hall was a founding director of the production company Motion Theory, which he helped build from a pure animation and design company into a live-action and visual effects studio.[2] Filmmakers Guillermo del Toro and Guillermo Navarro co-founded Mirada as Motion Theory’s feature-film visual effects arm, with Hall taking a creative leadership role in the new company and simultaneously continuing to write and direct projects.[3]
In 2010, Hall returned to TV, serving as a consulting producer and director for the debut season of Sam Raimi's Spartacus: Blood and Sand starring Lucy Lawless and Andy Whitfield.[4]
In 2013, Hall's video for Capital Cities' “Safe and Sound” was nominated for two MTV Video Music Awards, winning for Best Visual Effects.[5] That same year, he also co-directed Katy Perry’s “Roar,” the most-watched video of the year and People’s Choice Award winner.[6]
Hall left Motion Theory and Mirada in 2014 to join Partizan Entertainment,[7] home to directors such as Michel Gondry, Antoine Bardou-Jacquet, and Michael Gracey. There, he worked on campaigns for Amazon, Pepsi, and Microsoft – directing the global launch video for the HoloLens augmented-reality viewer.[8]
By 2016, Hall transitioned into the role of independent director, taking on a wider variety of creative projects through different production companies, agencies, and direct clients such as Intel, Honda, and Netflix.
| Year | Award | Project | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | Grammy Awards | Capital Cities “Safe and Sound” | Nominated for Best Music Video[14] |
| 2013 | People's Choice Awards | Katy Perry "Roar" | Won Favorite Music Video[15] |
| 2013 | MTV VMA | Capital Cities “Safe and Sound” | Won for Best Visual Effects[16] |