The "Psycho Kitties" Production Team

 

COLLEEN STRATTON - D I R E C T O R /

P R O D U C E R/C A T O W N E R

Los Angeles based artist/filmmaker Colleen Stratton has been drawing since she could pick up a pencil.  When she was a teenager, an adorable fantasy animal emerged from her subconscious.  While studying illustration at California State University, Long Beach, twenty-five more magical creatures, she named Anam Caras (Ah-nam Kär-as -- meaning Soul Friends in Gaelic), leapt onto page after page of archival paper in the shape of letters, becoming the basis for a children’s book entitled Anamabet. 

 

After college, Colleen worked as a freelance illustrator and commercial artist, before she segued into fine art.  Her gallery and solo exhibitions led to a collaboration with Britt Welin on a series of short experimental art videos that sparked Colleen’s interest in making films.  As she explored her new passion, she became active in Cinewomen, a non-profit organization of professional women in the entertainment industry, for which she produced monthly events, for four years, featuring guests such as Director Christopher Nolan and Woody Allen’s Producer Charles H. Joffe.  She then teamed up with The Getty Research Institute to produce a screening and discussion of the film ONEGIN at the Museum of Tolerance.   Colleen currently serves on the planning committee of Doculink, an all-volunteer, grassroots network of over 2000 documentary filmmakers around the world.

 

Paula Ely – Producer

Paula Ely has been involved in the entertainment industry since 1991, when she joined Carolco Television, the television production and syndication division of Carolco Pictures. Paula was involved in the sale and distribution of the Carolco and LIVE Entertainment libraries to the pay-per-view, cable, and free television markets before the company shuttered in 1993.  After consulting with Carolco on the sale of their library assets to the Worldvision company, Paula joined Jeff Kazmark to form Kazmark Entertainment Group, a firm created to create television advertising and programming trade opportunities in association with a major advertising agency. She also oversaw the creation of Springbok Films, a division of Kazmark Entertainment created in 2002, and line produced its first feature, “The Enigma with a Stigma”, an improvised comedy released in the summer of 2006.  In 2003, Paula traveled to Botswana to produce the documentary “Vanishing Cultures:  Bushmen of the Kalahari”, currently distributed by Filmakers Library.  The film was named “Best Documentary” at the Gulf Coast Film & Video Festival, and Paula received the “Best Producer” award at the La Femme Film Festival in Los Angeles.  She has also long been involved in community service, and received the Volunteer of the Year award in 2004 from PAWS/LA, an organization working to keep people with debilitating illnesses together with their companion animals.  Paula also produced and directed PAWS/LA’s showcase and fundraising video in 2006. Paula’s now at work producing a new documentary entitled “The Money Stone,” directed by Stuart Harmon, which explores the little-known world of illegal gold mining in Ghana.  “The Money Stone” has received a New York State Council for the Arts grant and the Roy W. Dean Los Angeles Documentary Video Grant and is scheduled to be completed in the summer of 2009.  Paula also recently joined director Colleen Stratton to complete production of “Psycho Kitties,” an entertaining and informative look at the issue of household cat aggression.

Dale Marks - Cinematographer

 Dale Marks studied photography at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena California.  After working as a commercial photographer for fifteen years, he segued into moving pictures.  Dale has been the cinematographer for over nine independent feature films, a myriad of shorts, commercials and music videos.  He has directed three short films, several corporate videos, and a play.  He also has designed lighting and grip equipment and conducted seminars on lighting for film, video and still photography at numerous schools and media organizations, including: UCLA; NYU; Art Center College Of Design; Pratt Institute and Brooks Institute.

 

Todd Cochran – Film Composer 

Todd Cochran studied music at Trinity College in London, England.  By age seventeen, he was playing or recording with jazz greats John Handy, Bobby Hutcherson and Rashaan Roland Kirk.  When Santana rerecorded a composition from Todd’s first jazz record Worlds Around the Sun, it led to the formation of Todd’s rock/R & B band Automatic Man (Island Records) and his composition My Pearl, which still remains on Billboard Magazine’s Top 40 list.  Todd went on to a long professional association with Peter Gabriel, and composed hits for Grover Washington Jr. and Freddie Hubbard.  Todd has composed musical scores for Showtimes’ Keep the Faith, Baby (the Adam Clayton Story), Women Thou Art Loosed for Magnolia Pictures, the Danny Glover film Toussaint L’Overture – founder of The Haitian Revolution and many more.

 

Carolyn Chrisman – Animator

 

Carolyn Chrisman’s animation skills are well beyond her 19 years.  She began studying painting formally at age 5 and animation at age eleven.  From 2000 to 2005 she studied animation with John Teton from Earthlight Pictures, and in 2005 attended an intensive Animation in Residence Program at California Institute for the Arts.  Her animated short films have screened at film festivals all over the world.  In 2004, Carolyn received the “Animation Student of the Year” award at the Anacapa College Preparatory School, and her film, Envious Heart won the Swarovski Designer Award at the Jugend Film Festival in Austria.  Carolyn is currently studying Animation at USC in Los Angeles, California and working a on a new animated musical film, as well as animating hilarious cats fights for Psycho Kitties.