Claire Edmondson cut her teeth as a director shooting conversation-generating music videos for Austra’s ‘Beat and the Pulse’ and Broken Social Scene’s ‘Sweetest Kill’. She hit the commercial scene in 2015 with the launch of ‘I’m a Boxer’ for Everlast, which addressed the insulting ways that people use ‘female’ as a needless moniker and was featured in the likes of Buzzfeed and Huffington Post.
She’s a Liverpudlian by birth but left the north-English city for Toronto, Canada, where she spent much of her youth. Nowadays she’s repped as a director in that market by Steam Films and Doomsday Entertainment in LA for the US market.
We hit her up for her Essential List to get to know her more.
o Place of birth: Liverpool, England
o Hometown: Toronto / LA
o Staycation: In LA I consider Palm Springs a staycation
o Vacation: Currently planning a trip to Greece
o Place of work: Wherever location set turns out to be. Or Steam Films (Toronto) or Doomsday Entertainment (LA)
o Place of workout: Griffith Park Hikes
o Mode of transport: A vintage Volvo. Really it’s just old, but vintage sounds better
o Miscellaneous Travel Essential: Sunscreen
Culture
o Artist: I think Tau Lewis, a young up-and-coming Toronto artist is the most interesting person in the art world right now
o Musician: All time favourites include Depeche Mode and Kanye West. Although I’m mad at Kanye for his “Bill Cosby is innocent” tweet
o Film director: Lynch, Haneke, Coppola (Sofia)
o Photographer: Juergen Teller for his humour
o Film: Mulholland Drive
o Series: Atlanta, Fleebag
o Commercial: Nagi Noda’s Coke Commercial
o Music Video: Classics like Hole ‘Malibu’, George Michael ‘Freedom’, Pass This On ‘The Knife’
o Video Game: Does Words With Friends count as a video game?
o Board Game: Does Sudoku count here?
o Book: Anything Joan Didion or Jeffrey Eugenides
Joan Didion in front of her Daytona Yellow Stingray Corvette
o Graphic Novel: Black Hole by Charles Burns
o Newspaper (off or online): NYT – their work on the Weinstein expose has changed the course for women forever and we are just getting started
o Magazine: Purple
o Breakfast: Coffee
o Restaurant: Salazar
o Cheap bite: Taco trucks
o Working lunch: Some sort of salad / veggie bowl
o Snack: Macadamia nuts
o Guilty Pleasure: BREAD
Claire's culinary kryptonite
o Bar: Hotel bars
o Tipple: Tequila
o Soft Tipple: Mezcal
o Miscellaneous food: Ramen, tuna sashimi
o Miscellaneous Beverage: Green smoothies
o Phone: iPhone
o Computer: MacBook Pro
o Headphones: AIAIAI earbuds
o Pen / pencil: Retro 1951 Tornado (black)
o Where you document an idea: Note app on my iPhone
o Casual wear: Jeans
o Smart wear: Jeans with some sort of heeled boot or shoe
o Footwear: Depends on my mood / look
o App: Whatever can deliver food. Habit Bull
o Work program: Final Draft. Random note: when working at home I find the Pomodoro Technique very helpful and I sit outside with my plants on the breaks between
o Analogue work tool: So many notebooks
o Morning grooming / makeup essential: Exfoliator