#71 Heather Heller, Director, Executive Producer discusses challenges of a working mom

Heather began her career in the mid 1990s, working as and assistant to Executive Producer Lexi Godfrey and director Lol Crème. She quickly rose through the ranks of production and began getting offers from clients like HSI, MJZ, and Propaganda Films for freelance work. During this period, she met photographer and director Matthew Rolston at HSI and produced beauty spots and print ads for L’Oreal, Revlon, Estée Lauder and Maybelline. Working with photographers and visual directors has remained her focus for 20 years.  Developing a niche for producing celebrity driven fashion spots ultimately led her to DNA where she produced spots and videos for  twelve years with Directors Francis Lawrence, Jean Baptiste Mondino, Sam Brown, Paul Gore, Cyril Guyot, Marc Webb, Rich Lee and Director X.  Projects for Jenniffer Lopez, Lady Gaga, Tommy Hilfiger, Dior, Armani, and D&G helped her to narrow the focus to Luxury Brands and fashion driven content.   Working with clients directly often from Europe on fragrance, cosmetics, liquor, tech, and has really helped to curate a body of work that speaks to her strengths as a producer.  Understanding the unique needs of a director/photographer and specific ethos of the brand is a incredibly specific skill that requires innate knowledge that can only be gained through experience. Whether its still images or dynamic video, high-quality content with superior production value has the power to intrigue luxury consumers and draw them into the brand world, and no one understands this better than Heather.

Heather was  tapped by director Anthony Mandler another acclaimed photographer and director to helm his production company Black Hand Cinema.  Heather oversaw the bidding, production and post production of notable spots and music videos. She was also able to combine her skills of packaging photo, tv and integrated content.   Relying on her strength of producing tent pole music videos, she and Mandler produced engaging work for  Taylor Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble”, Rihanna’s “Diamonds” and Lana Del Rey’s “Ride” and "Tropico" which was a 25 minute film screened in theaters. Heather has been bestowed with numerous awards by her peers in the music industry, including the Grammy Award in 2010 for producing Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” music video, Billboards Video of the Decade 2000 Bad Romance, as well as MTV's UK Music Video Award for Lana Del Rey’s ''National Anthem'', and an MTV Video Award for Best Female Video for Swifts “Trouble” in 2013 and best Female Pop Video for Selena Gomez “Come and Get it”.  

Freelance producing has also been part of her career path - Johnny Green, Wally Pfister, Fabien Baron, Martin Werner are amongst the directors she has collaborated shooting spots all over the world for clients Apple, HTC, Calvin Klein, and Nissan.

Heather continues to be at the fore­front of cre­ative ad­ver­tis­ing and film pro­duc­tion working on digital campaigns for Tiffany and Co. with Elle Fanning, Cartier with Annabelle Wallis and, YSL Cosmetics with Zoe Kravitz.  Establishing new relationships with directors Cass Bird, Craig McDean, Karim Sadli and keeping those with legends like Lawrence and Mondino make her on the cutting edge of media. From pho­tog­ra­phy to mu­sic, to brand campaigns and content, Heather is mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary producer of to­day and to­morrow. 

For more information about Heather Heller visit: www.HeatherHellerProducer.com  

https://www.sinnersandsaints.la/heather-heller