Prudence Fenton is an award-winning creative visualist who doesn't so much think outside the box as she thinks as if there were no box. As a producer, filmmaker, executive, animator, multi-media artist and Internet visionary, she has pushed boundaries and changed the ways things look, and the way we experience them, for over twenty-five years.

Fenton takes ideas and makes things out of them with style and wit and intelligence -- things that resonate throughout pop culture consciousness at large and advance its evolution. From groundbreaking rock music videos such as the VMA and Billboard award-winning clip for Peter Gabriel's "Big Time" to TV landmarks including Pee-wee's Playhouse with Paul Reubens -- for which she was twice Emmy-honored -- her creations always look like nothing that came before. Saturated with Fenton's acrobatic creative muse, these and other works set new standards in media.

Being ahead of her time is par for the course for Fenton, nowhere more so than in the cyber-realm. In the mid '90s, along with collaborator Allee Willis, she was involved in the creation of an evolving prototype for the very first social network, willisville. An interactive virtual universe that received funding from Intel, willisville was called, "a collision of high tech and soap opera kitsch" by the Wall Street Journal. During this seminal digital era, she also created and produced an interactive TV demo for daVinci Time & Space, and consulted for technology and entertainment companies including Microsoft, Disney Online, and AOL.

Currently, Fenton's latest endeavor as Creative Director of Fanista.com -- a retail media distribution network and online community for entertainment enthusiasts -- continues her tradition of being at the vanguard of disruptive technologies and cultural zeitgeist.

Most recently for Fanista, she served as Creative Executive Producer for 37 short videos about Burma that premiered on www.burmaitcantwait.org, a website hosted by Fanista, as well as on all other video sites like youtube, veoh, funnyordie, etc. The project, in association with the U.S. Campaign for Burma and Jack Healey of the Human Rights Action Center, was originally conceived to raise awareness about Burma's repressive military dictatorship, and was already underway before the cyclone hit in early May. Since then, the "little movies," as Fenton calls them, have drawn even more attention. Created through the collaborations of a diverse array of writers, directors and filmmakers, each video features a notable celebrity, with participants including Jennifer Aniston, Jackson Browne, Will Ferrell, Felicity Huffman, Ellen Page, and Sylvester Stallone, among others.

Fenton has been involved in Fanista's development since 2005, and was originally brought in by the site's founder Dan Adler, another entertainment industry visionary passionate about the integration of art and technology. They previously collaborated when he was VP of Creative Development at Walt Disney Imagineering in the late '90s. Back then, Fenton worked with Adler (who has also headed CAA's New Media division) as Producer for an Interactive Television demo for Disney and ABC. Fenton has continued to independently consult and produce for Imagineering on projects and R&D initiatives.

Besides the aforementioned Pee-wee's Playhouse, for which Fenton served as Animation and Effects Producer, and now-classic videos with Peter Gabriel -- including the Grammy and VMA award-winning "Steam" -- Fenton's previous successes also include her animated short film for Amnesty International illustrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Shown at fundraising concerts for Amnesty throughout '88, the film won the Lillian Gish Award at the 1989 Women in Film Festival. Also award-winning was her seminal '80s work for the then-fledgling MTV Network. Fenton's program I.D.s for "Subway" and "MTV Sandwich" won Clios, and the celebrated "Elephant" I.D. concept was honored by ASIFA (International Animated Film Society). From 1991-1993, Fenton continued on with MTV as Executive Producer and Story Editor for Liquid Television, developing and producing twenty-two half-hour episodes.

Other career highlights include serving as Co-Executive Producer from 1997-2000 for Disney Animation's One Saturday Morning, a top-rated ABC-TV children's show blending a virtual set, live action bumpers, and branded cartoons. Fenton was also co-creator, producer and director for Oxygen Media's Fat Girl series on the Oxygen network and website, and for Driving While Black, (with visuals by Allee Willis/Bubbles the Artist), a web-based cartoon for Urbanentertainment.com. From 2002-2004, she worked with Walt Disney TVA-Disney Video Premieres as Development Producer for Emperor's New Groove 2 and Producer for Treasure Planet 2.

Most recently, Fenton's credits include a 2004 run as Animation Producer, in association with Acme Filmworks, for the Green Screen Show. Executive Produced by, and starring, Drew Carey, the half-hour primetime program for the WB featured Carey and a cadre of comics performing improv against a green screen, their routines embellished with smart and funny animation. In 2005, she was Supervising Producer for the pilot for MTV and Coquette Productions' DIRT (Defiant In the Face of Rowdy Tyrants) Squirrel, a mixed media, live action/animation show starring David Arquette as a crime-fighting, squirrel suit-clad suburban avenger.

Looking ahead, Fenton believes we've only seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of the ways that interactivity, networking, and computer and communications technology will revolutionize entertainment, commerce and community. "Computers transformed media," she says. "Things that had taken a team of people days to do way back when can now be done in your pajamas before breakfast. That process, both for the creators and the consumers of media, will only become more transformative in the future."

As ever, Fenton intends to remain flexible and an integral part of the flow -- "I love doing interesting things and solving new problems," she says. "I hope to keep doing that." She also intends to actively pursue her career as a painter. And that's all before breakfast.

 

Prudence Fenton © 2008


storyboard illustrations by Mark Middleton Paper Hero Design