Please click here to visit the directors' reels and bios.

Bruce Paynter
Jim Weedon
Brent Bonacorso
Reuben Sutherland
Tomaso Cariboni
Nick Browne
Found Collective
Padraic O'Meara
Catharina Roland
Giacomo Cimini
Aischa Muller

Bruce Paynter

Director

Bruce has been a director for quite a few years now… But he is our youngest at heart! Before starting Cab he was a Creative Director on the boards of Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town as well as the South African Holding Group.

He worked on Volkswagen, Shell, Dunlop, as well as many local South African brands. He wrote ads for everything from fossil fuels to fashion.

David Ogilvy once told him that his art direction was so bad he should be hospitalised… Somehow he still managed to win a few awards including a Loerie Grand Prix, appeared in D&AD twice, and won a Gold and a Bronze Lion in Cannes.

In 1998 Bruce started directing commercials. In 2000 he appeared on the Saatchi’s New Directors Showcase in Cannes. And in 2003, he finally started CAB with his friend and Producer Charles Gallacher.

Since then Bruce has shot commercials for the likes of Coca-Cola, Vodacom, Smirnoff, Telkom and Toyota just to name a few… His reel tells the rest of the story.

Nick Browne

Director

A director with an eye for unfussy cinematic style and a special knack for understated performance-driven storytelling, Nick Browne was born in London, raised in continental Europe and now works in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa.

Formerly head researcher at one of South Africa’s biggest production companies, Nick moved to CAB where he made the switch to fully-fledged directorship in 2005.

He recently finished a 4-ad Vodacom/Musica campaign for Jupiter Drawing Room, Cape Town and before that he completed a charming comedy performance piece for Lifestyle through Grey Worldwide Johannesburg.

Padraic O'meara

Director

Padraic is a commercials director based in Cape Town, he works as a director and a photographer. Having studied animation and then filmmaking, he entered the media industry full time in 2005. He has has worked in animation, fictional television, documentary television, advertising and the fashion, commercial and documentary photographic world for the past 5 years.

His photographic and film projects are an exploration of the interactions of people and their relationships with their landscapes and each other. His intimate view allows the audience a unique insight into the emotions of his subjects and the worlds they inhabit. The strong visual style he brings to any project gives his work a unique presence. Please also visit www.padraicomeara.com

Jim Weedon

Director

Jim is an exciting visual effects director with strong performance and a great visual style. Trained as an editor, Jim began his career in music videos. He swiftly progressed into editing features and has a long list of credits, including the Elysian Fields sequences in Gladiator and the title sequence for Hannibal. He broke into commercials soon after and in 2001 was awarded a D&AD Pencil for Outstanding Editing on the Adidas campaign.

After a suggestion from Sir Ridley Scott, Jim started directing.

Jim is known for his attention to detail, distinctive visual style and the importance of sound within his work. He won the BBC New Directors Award with his film There Was a Man starring Jessica Stevenson and in 2005 shot The Deal, a short film based on two men thrown together by fate, which featured Lord Of the Rings star Bernard Hill.

His hard-hitting charity spot for the Motor Neurone Disease Association, won Best Crafted Commercial of 2009 and Best Sound Direction at the British Television Advertising Craft Awards as well as securing various nominations for Best Visual Effects, Best Editing, Best Direction at the BTA Craft, Clios, and Shark Awards. It combines intimate performance with powerful visuals, seamless effects and flawless editing. Other spots in the tele-communication and corporate category have seen him work on a much wider canvas, complete with sweeping landscapes, heavy CGI and a vibrant visual palette. Jim has recently taken a “special cab” all the way to South Africa…

Rueben Sutherland

Director

Reuben left school to get his design portfolio together, enrolling in design school with aspirations of becoming an illustrator. He earned a degree in Graphic Design, with an emphasis on photography, which he applied to a number of pursuits – including architectural renderer and record label president – before settling into his career as a director.

Sutherland has since made waves internationally in the spot and music video arenas. His eye-popping projects include spots for Orange, Playstation, T-Mobile, Ikea, Coke, Eurostar/Da Vinci Code amongst others... His video for Phoenix Foundation’s was inspired by the work of Cecil B. Demille, “Hitchcock” garnered the ‘Best Music Video’ Award at The Ottawa Animation Festival, as well as an inclusion in the D&AD 2006 book for great creativity for a Music Video.

Sutherland quickly followed “Hitchcock” with an acclaimed clip for The Doves. Recent projects include Smirnoff for JWT as well as a new Adidas job. Reuben is CAB’s new great addition courtesy of Joyrider Films London with whom he is mainly affiliated.

Brent Bonacorso

Director

Brent has been passionately directing for nine years. He started his career in graphic design and art direction, working with agencies such as DDB, Pyro and The Richards Group. He eventually transitioned to music video and commercials work, quickly earning recognition for his unique visual style and extensive use of innovative post techniques in his productions.

Brent creates beautifully composed live action and animation work that embodies his unique craftsmanship. Clients included Nike, Converse, Hummer, Doc Marten, Infiniti, Seattle Art Museum, Sony Playstation, Guinness and Dolby.

Recently he completed his short film 'Now and Nowhere', winning awards at both the Malibu Film Festival as well as the Beverly Hills Film Festival. His new film West Of The Moon has already been short listed to win some international awards. He spends his time between London and Venice, California. Another very gifted director who we also share with Joyrider Films.

Found Collective

Director

Mainly represented by Joyrider Films London, the directing duo was recently established by Mike Sharpe and Barney Steel. Barney has spent the last 7 years freelancing as a director, FX artist and designer in commercials, broadcast and experimental film projects as a member of the VJ collective ‘D-FUSE’. Mike was senior designer for four years at ‘The Pavement’. Their goal is to find projects that allow exploring the artistic and commercial opportunities within TV, web and interactive.

Amongst their eye popping commercial and video work for Depeche Mode, Sony, Pendulum, Stewart Lee and One Charity, they’re keen to explore new ways for viewers to interact with a brand such as walk in projection installations, hologramatic face tracking and interactive window displays.

They firmly recognize that the future is in a merger of these disciplines and that theirs and others’ specialist skills, when put in one place, can lead to exciting innovative outcomes.

Tomaso Cariboni

Director

Tomaso graduated in law at the State University of Milan before moving to Paris where he worked as a producer on various TV formats.  After a few years, he was enticed back to Italy to work for BRW & Partners, one of Italy’s largest commercial production companies. He then moved into the freelance arena working as 1st AD and producer on commercials and feature films with award winning directors.

In the last three /four years he’s been directing commercials, documentary films, corporate videos and short feature films for clients such as Diesel, Gas Jeans, Technogym, Fiat, The Italian Ministry of Education, Direct Line, and Chicco amongst others.

In 2008 he won the Cannes Young Directors Award and in 2009 was selected for the Locarno International Film Festival. Tomaso now lives and works in London and he is keen to add a South African shoot to his reel that includes commercials for Heineken, Enel, Freddy and more.

Giacomo Cimini

Director

Giacomo started as a second AD and worked his way up to direct low budget feature films before he managed to direct the first season of a TV series of documentaries. In this time he learned how to produce, operate a camera and edit in all the formats (16mm, 35mm, DV, HD, RED). In 2003 Giacomo directed the micro-budget horror film “Red Riding Hood”. He then directed the TV series “Delitti” for Fox Italy before completing a masters degree in Filmmaking at the London Film School.

Giacomo won best brief at the Kodak Commercial Award 2006.

His latest short film “La Citta' nel Cielo” (The City in the Sky) premiered at the 66th Venice Film Festival in 2009. He was also recently selected for the 2010 Berlin Talent Campus. Last February he won the trailermade 2010 competition and he has just co-produced a teaser trailer for the feature “Bleak Sea” starring Vincent Regan, Samuel Roukin and Robert Sheehan.

Aischa Muller

Director

Aischa is a hidden gem…a young “fool” who graduated as a stage designer at The Academy of Fine Arts of Florence. She attended several photography shoots where she worked as stage designer and camera assistant. Aischa has a passion for film, music, photography and even painting. In fact her grandmother is a popular abstract painter who has had an influence on her desire to find a new and subjective way to see the world.

Aischa is a fervent creator, she often gets up in the middle of the night to start a new project…She reckons that that’s the moment when a visual work forms and that is also the very moment when Aischa starts functioning…

The most important aspect in her productions is to keep the fictitious elements in the film real and visible; this way her creations wouldn’t fade into the common reality that generally forces the audience to be passive. She’s our provocative lioness!

Catharina Roland

Director

Viennese born and bred, Catharina studied film and directing until she got a degree in drama at the University of Austria. She started her professional career by directing a few drama plays. She then worked in various capacities in the film industry.

Catharina has been working as a commercials director since 1997. She has lately produced and directed a documentary about the shifts of consciousness. Today she is also a script writer.