Dallas Hallam
Dallas Hallam has over two decades’ worth of experience in media arts. After receiving a degree in Cinemaand Comparative Literature from the University of Iowa, Dallas moved to Los Angeles where he made films and videos from the ground up. Working across a spectrum of the filmmaking process, Dallas has directed, produced, and edited films and videos for a variety of studios and clients over the years.
In 2008, Dallas sold his first feature-length documentary (Let’s be Active) to Sick Room Records. The film documented the Let’s be Active Tour featuring the talented William Elliott Whitmore. In 2011, Dallas sold his first feature film, Entrance, to IFC. Entrance went on to garner festival acclaim and was written up in Entertainment Weekly as one of Stephen King’s favorite indie releases of the year. After the success of Entrance, Dallas went on to co-direct the sequel The Pact II as well as co-write one ofthe segments in the well-regarded horror anthology Southbound.
Most recently, Dallas directed (along with producer Ben Lewis) the festival audience favoriteUnderstanding Scott McCloud’s Zot!
Ben Lewis
Benjamin Lewis was a terrible student, however based on the strength of his claymation super8mm films he was able to get into Emerson College without really meeting the requirements. Once in college he quickly learned that life was not compatible with spending ten hours a day alone in a small room moving bits of clay a millimeter at a time. So he switched his course of study to film, only later realizing that hours trapped in an editing room with only film, tape, and razor blades also got in the way of having fun. So he finally decided on writing since it seemed like the creative endeavor that required the least amount of time between concept and presentable object.
After graduating with a creative writing degree and no real idea what he wanted to do he started attending the school of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston where he dabbled in painting, sculpture, performance art, postmodernism, Installation and video art. After a few years of this he left school perhaps more unemployable then when he arrived. After working in a video store and being a stereotypical slacker for a time, he decided to move across the country.
Arriving in Los Angeles he soon stumbled into a job in the art department on a movie. The movie was very bad, but the job was very good, touching upon many of the skills he had picked up in the preceding years. Over the twenty years since then Ben has worked mostly as a Property Master on many film and television shows. He has recently started making documentary films.