Olly Blackburn

Did You Know?

• Blackburn co-founded musikmotion Labs in 2022 with the University of North Texas.
• His short film Swallowed won the Martin Scorsese Post-Production Award at NYU.
• He acted in the Oscar-winning short A Shocking Accident in 1982.

Early life and education

Blackburn was born in London. In 1982 he acted in the short comedy film A Shocking Accident, which won an Academy Award for Best Short Subject in 1983. He earned a degree in history from Oxford University in 1993, then worked in journalism. A Fulbright Scholarship enabled him to study film and television at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. His short film Swallowed received the 1996 Martin Scorsese Post-Production Award. Blackburn has cited Sam Peckinpah and Michael Powell as role models.

Film career

Before directing features, Blackburn made commercials and music videos. He worked at Warp X with founder Robin Gutch. He served as second unit director on the film Reverb. Blackburn co-wrote and directed Donkey Punch, shot in South Africa over 24 days on a £1 million budget. Critics compared the film to Peter Berg's Very Bad Things, Phillip Noyce's Dead Calm, and Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water. He also wrote the film Vinyan, which critics likened to Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now and Heart of Darkness.

Commercials

Blackburn has directed commercials in a visually poetic and comedic style. His BBC Local Radio Show Your Love commercials earned eight London International Awards and a 2011 D&AD Yellow Pencil. He was nominated as Best New Director for the Gomez music video "78 Stone Wobble" at the 1999 CAD music video awards and for the CFP Young Directors award at Cannes for his BBC Education commercial 'Anonymous Learners'.

TV career

Blackburn has directed episodes of Glue, the Endeavour season finale "Coda", Victoria, and StartUp. His work on The Widow was noted by The Observer. In 2019 he directed the first three episodes of Sanditon, adapted by Andrew Davies from Jane Austen's unfinished novel. He directed the second half of Dangerous Liaisons in 2022; a hunt sequence in a single three-and-a-half-minute take was described as a cinematic tour de force. Blackburn has commented that 21st-century viewers want to see the past stress similarities with the present, comparing the turmoil in Sanditon to Brexit.