James Adams is a South Australian Screen Awards nominated writer/director with a Bachelor's Degree and Post-Graduate Certificate in Film and Television from the University of South Australia.
Going straight from high school into studying engineering, James knew his true passion was for filmmaking and transferred courses. Now he’s created a few short films and crewed on several professional productions.
His short horror/comedy film, Nature Therapy, was nominated for Best Comedy at the 2021 SASA’s and won runner-up student film at the 2022 Sony Catchlight Film Festival. In early 2022 he wrote a short script for a competition held by Triple-A gaming company, Techland, which won 1st place in the competition. His spec TVC was shortlisted for the Sony Pictures and World Photography Organisation's Picture This Competition. His fake live-TV commercial for "Full-On Sunnies" was selected to play in the GenreBlast Film Festival and won best sketch at the Soul Punch Film Festival. In 2023, his single-take thriller/comedy short, Out With A..., was selected for the Film Concept Lab presentation at the Adelaide Film Festival.
While freelance writing, directing and editing, James is taking every opportunity to learn more about the film & TV industry. He has interned for the production companies, Beach House Pictures (Singapore) and We Made a Thing Studios (Adelaide). He has also worked as a PA/Runner for shows like Australian Idol, My Kitchen Rules, Snackmasters and Million Dollar Island.
At the end of 2022, James participated in the Hands On TV training initiative run by Breakout Productions. He was trained in the role of Post-Producer, receiving a credit as Additional Post-Producer for working on a story in the 3rd season of Breakout's observational documentary series, Aussie Snake Wranglers.
Near the end of 2024, James was selected as a Script Coordinator Attachment on season 3 of the Logie award-winning RFDS. James worked with and learnt from Lewis Mulholland, Kodie Bedford, and Ian Meadows.
He is currently in post-production on two short films that he wrote and directed. One is produced by SASA-winning Madison Siegertsz. On which, he worked with stunt coordinator Glen Boswell (The Matrix, The Hobbit) (yes, really). The other short is the Mercury Quicksilver-funded short, Holding Out, which is produced by Craig Jackson and stars Matt Crook (Top End Wedding, Monolith) and Wendy Bos (Neighbours, Hawke).
He's also writing a lot and also doing other really cool and interesting things.
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About page cover photo by: @connorpphotography (Instagram)