Ben Shedd
- Producer
- Director
- Writer
Since 1970, Ben Shedd has directed, designed, and produced 30 films and
co-written 19 of them. He was a member of the original production team
for the PBS TV series NOVA and worked on the very first production in
1972. He shares a 1974 Peabody Award for his work as one of the
producer/director writers of NOVA's second season and joined with the
current NOVA staff to receive the National Science Foundation's first
National Science Board Public Service Award honoring NOVA's 25 years
on-the-air. Ben started his own production company Shedd Productions,
Inc. in 1976 and, with Jacqueline Phillips Shedd, received the 1978
Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject for his first
independent film The Flight of the Gossamer Condor (1978), about the invention of history's first
successful human powered airplane. Ben Shedd has produced films, live
television, location video, and computer productions, and moves easily
between different forms of media storytelling. He specializes in
complex science subjects. He has directed, produced, written and
co-edited four giant screen IMAX films - three of them produced through
his production company. Ben's films have received over 40 international
awards and have been shown around the world. In addition to his
production work, Ben taught film for 10 years at his alma mater, the
University of Southern California's acclaimed School of Cinema
Television, as well as teaching at the California Institute of the Arts
and Art Center College of Design. He was the 1989-90 PNM Endowed Chair
Professor of Media Arts in the School of Fine Arts at the University of
New Mexico. Ben was a Senior Research Scholar and Lecturer teaching in
the Department of Computer Science at Princeton University 1997-2003,
doing research, teaching, and developing design criteria for effective
ways to use giant screen systems in informal science education. Ben
Shedd is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and
has served on its Documentary and Student Academy Award nominating
committees. In 1989 Ben was awarded an Alden B. Dow Creativity
Fellowship to research giant screen filmmaking, and began working on a
book and articles called Exploding The Frame, about designing giant
screen films and digital walls.
