Cutters Studios’ Craig Duncan Named 2024 AICP Post Awards Chairperson

Matt Miller, president and CEO of AICP, announced today that Craig Duncan, president and managing director of Cutters Studios, has been named chairperson of the 2024 AICP Post Awards. In addition, AICP has announced the full lineup of industry experts who will be serving on the AICP Post Awards Curatorial Committee.

The entry deadline for the AICP Post Awards, along with the AICP Show: The Art & Technique of the Commercial, and the AICP Next Awards, is March 5, 2024. Full entry details can be found here. The winners of each show will debut during AICP Week in New York, and be featured at a gala celebration at The Museum of Modern Art on June 6, 2024.

“I’ve known Craig for many years, and worked closely with him during the coming together of the industry’s production and post production companies when AICE was merged into AICP,” said Matt. “ Craig’s a champion not only of his own company’s artists and producers, but of our industry as well. We’re excited to have his leadership, vision and experience guiding the AICP Post Awards in 2024.”

A respected industry leader, Craig says that he was touched and honoured  by the invitation to serve as chairperson of the Post Awards. “To be honest, I was a bit overwhelmed,” he said. “To have been associated with the post industry for so long, and to have worked so hard to get us to where we are today, this feels like an amazing pinnacle for my career. And to have been invited by the AICP Post Awards Executive Committee was really pretty special.”

Craig leads Cutters Studios - which has offices in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Kansas City and Tokyo - an award-winning company providing production, post production, and creative development services for causes, brands, studios, networks, and agencies. Through partner companies Cutters, Dictionary Films, Flavor, and Another Country, Cutters Studios offers its clients unlimited production, post production, design and audio capabilities. 

A Detroit native and self-described theatre nerd, Craig earned a degree in theatre arts from Western Michigan University and launched his career in New York, working on the production staff at the famed Public Theater as well as at other companies. Shifting his focus to TV and relocating to L.A., he eventually became the  post production supervisor on the series for “Boy Meets World” and was later promoted to syndication supervisor for Buena Vista Television. He returned to Detroit in 2000, joining  Griot Editorial, eventually rising to the post of VP and managing director. In 2010 he joined Cutters in Chicago as executive producer, later being named a partner before taking on the company’s managing director role in 2013. He was promoted to president in 2020.

On assuming the chairperson’s post, Craig cited the work of his three predecessors – Chris Franklin of Big Sky Edit, Yvette Cobarrubias of Cosmo Street and Jen Dean of Cut+Run – in not only shepherding the competition through the difficult virtual years of the pandemic, but also being part of creating the combined format for honouring and presenting the top winners across all three of the AICP Awards, including the AICP Show: The Art & Technique of the Commercial, and the AICP Next Awards, in one gala evening at The Museum of Modern Art.

“Chris, Yvette and Jen, along with their AICP Show chairperson counterparts, the Board of Governors and Matt Miller and his staff, have done an amazing job in making all three competitions have an equal weight and prominence,” Craig commented. “For those of us in post production, we feel like we’re all on the same pedestal. It’s just an incredible evolution from where we began.”

2024 AICP Post Awards Curators Announced

As chairperson of the AICP Post Awards, Craig is tasked with assembling the competition’s Curatorial Committee, which will determine the final disposition of the Post Awards, as well as selecting the 2024 Best of Show from among the category winners. As a longtime member of the Midwest post community, Craig says he looked to broaden its makeup from a regional standpoint, and sought out a number of strong curatorial candidates whose careers have been based primarily between the coasts.

 “I want to have the best of the best in every single discipline when it comes to Curators,” Craig explained. “I reached out to people who understand the disciplines and are savvy to the nuances of what we do in post. And while we didn’t overlook the amazing talent based in cities like L.A. and New York, I also sought out people in the Southeast, the Southwest and here in the Midwest, all of whom have put themselves on the line for our industry and our community. So our Curators roster includes professionals from all over, with folks from Dallas, Kansas City, Cincinnati, Nashville and Chicago, as well as from abroad. I think it’s going to give us a great perspective on the post production crafts, and I’m looking forward to reviewing the work with them when we meet.”

The 2024 Post Awards Curatorial Committee includes past AICP Post Awards chairs Yvette Cobarrubias, managing partner/owner, Cosmo Street and Jen Dean, editor at Cut+Run. Also serving are editors Amber Saunders of Cabin Editing Company, Elena De Palma of TenThree, Grant Gustafson of Cutters, Jeff Ferruzzo of Arcade Edit and Chris Gipson, partner at Republic. Colourists on the Committee include Maria Carretero of Assembly, Billy Gabor of Company 3 and Mike Howell of Color Collective, who’ll be joined by flame artist/VFX supervisor Sarah Marika of The Mill, VFX director/artist Victoria Osborne of Framestore and executive creative director Brian McCauley of the VFX studio Flavor. Curators from the audio discipline include Phil Loeb, managing patner of Heard City and sound designer & mixer Julienne Guffain of Sonic Union. Representing the agency world are Katy Hornaday, chief creative officer of Barkley, and Pat Burke, executive creative director of Highdive. Rounding out the Committee are director Ritesh Gupta of Merman and Paul Chick, director, North American content leader at Procter & Gamble.

The AICP Post Awards presents trophies to the post production artists credited with the work in 25 categories covering editorial; music and sound; colour grading; and design, visual effects and finishing. To be eligible for the 2024 competition, work must have first aired or launched between March 13th, 2023 and March 11, 2024. Past winners of the AICP Post Awards can be viewed here.