Adam Collis

Adam Collis is a filmmaker and film professor at Arizona State University’s Sidney Poitier New American Film School. Collis loves making movies, teaching, and helping his students and former students advance in their careers.

After earning his BA in Religion from Duke University, Collis enrolled in the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts where he earned his MFA in Film Production and specialized in Cinematography and Directing.

While at UCA SCA, Collis directed the award-winning short film, Mad Boy, I’ll Blow Your Blues Away. Be Mine. Six months after graduating, on the merits of Mad Boy alone, Collis was hired by 20th Century Fox to direct the feature film, Sunset Strip, starring Simon Baker (The Mentalist), Anna Friel (Monarch), Nick Stahl (Terminator 3), Adam Goldberg (Saving Private Ryan) and Oscar-winner Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club). Sunset Strip was produced by Linson Films (Yellowstone, Fight Club, Heat, The Untouchables) and has just been re-released on VOD.

Collis produced and directed a variety of unique projects starting with a Y2K documentary (Fukuda 2000), a courtroom show send-up starring Andy Kaufman’s alter ego, Tony Clifton (Stormy Justice with Judge Tony Clifton), a spoof investigative report on the “Face on Mars” conspiracy featuring “the Geraldo Rivera of Haiti”, Jovan Yuan Vansu Rameau (Hai-TV), and an expressionistic documentary short about a rock balancing cairn artist, Balance.

Seeking an understanding of the entertainment business, Collis enrolled in UCLA Anderson School of Management where he earned his MBA. While at UCLA Anderson, Collis led a six-person, six-month research project on new business models for independent films, with a focus on the risk-reward profiles of such investments. Around the same time, Collis began teaching as a Visiting Professor at Arizona State University’s young film program.

Recognizing the innovative and entrepreneurial spirit, as well as the commitment to inclusion and access to higher education that ASU President Michael Crow had just begun to institute at ASU, Collis started creating new and exciting programs that connected his students with working Hollywood professionals. Within just a few years, Collis had given his students the chance to speak with and learn from over two dozen highly successful industry pros…and as a result, the industry began to recognize ASU film’s program.

Taking his teaching innovation to the next level, Collis produced and directed an independent feature film in Arizona, which simultaneously gave 85 ASU students the opportunity to learn filmmaking on a working film set from an Oscar winning cast and crew. Car Dogs stars Patrick J. Adams (Suits), George Lopez, Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding), and Oscar winner Octavia Spencer (The Help). In addition to innovating a sort of teaching hospital for aspiring filmmakers, the project innovated in many other ways: The set served as an innovation lab which conducted research, development and testing of cutting edge film equipment like Rail-cam, Movi-Cam, and Drone-cam. Using his MBA research, Collis created a new way to finance independent features. And this entailed creating innovative ways to market, release and exploit indie features.

After its theatrical release, Car Dogs played on Netflix, DirecTV, Amazon Video, Apple+ and on most other VOD platforms. Subsequently, three more feature films were made by ASU film professors using Car Dogs’ model.

After the success of the Car Dogs, ASU asked Collis what he wanted to do next. His answer was to say that what he wanted wasn’t as important as what the students and film program needed. That was a best-of-class professional development / industry relations program. In 2015, with the extraordinary support of visionary supervisor and arts educator, Jake Pinholster, Collis founded ASU Film Spark, which President Michael Crow and the Trustees of ASU established to help create ASU’s initial presence, linkage and connection with the entertainment industry. Over its seven years, Film Spark gave hundreds of ASU students opportunities to 1) learn from top level Film & TV creatives and executives; 2) prepare for their professional lives; and 3) take their first steps into their careers.

Film Spark was based in Los Angeles, but it developed a two-way corridor between ASU and Hollywood. Top Hollywood filmmakers, both studio and independent, came to Arizona for master classes. Students came to Hollywood for career fairs and professional development boot camps. Film Spark helped connect ASU with LA highschoolers and community college students, while also helping the ASU Alumni Association galvanize a Hollywood Sun Devil community. An apex moment for Film Spark occurred in February of 2020 when approximately 150 ASU film students traveled to Los Angeles for the Film Spark Career Fair and to meet nearly 125 alumni at a special Hollywood Sun Devil mixer at the historical Culver Hotel. At the event, Lionsgate Vice Chairman and ASU alumnus, Michael Burns, gave the welcoming remarks. Since then, the Hollywood Sun Devil ecosystem has taken root, expanding beyond Film Spark. Today, Hollywood Sun Devils regularly network on their own and help each advance in Hollywood. And at least 3 feature films have been made by individuals who met through Film Spark’s Hollywood Sun Devil community.

By the time Film Spark was sunsetted in 2022, the group had connected ASU and its film students with 6 Oscar-winners, 6 Oscar-nominees, 8 studio chiefs, the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the president of the Directors Guild of America, along with dozens of industry executives, blockbuster producers, A-list department heads, and award-winning directors… all in service to the many students who participated in Film Spark’s programs.

Film Spark also took on ambitious initiatives, special events and unique master classes which gave students extraordinary educational experiences and connected industry luminaries more deeply with ASU. Notable accomplishments in this area include:

• Bringing Dreamscape Immersive’s CEO, Walter Parkes, to ASU for a two day symposium on the future (Inventing the Future All Over Again). The symposium featured Parkes and the team of futurists he had assembled in 2000 to help Steven Spielberg envision the futuristic world of Minority Report. Collis cultivated the relationship with Parkes over the next three years. This led Collis to suggest an ASU-Dreamscape partnership to his supervisor, Jake Pinholster, and to arrange Walter Parkes’ first meeting with President Crow in Los Angeles at Dreamscape. The result was Dreamscape Learn, a transformational virtual reality education experience born from Dreamscape Immersive’s groundbreaking entertainment platform and Michael Crow’s vision for higher education.
• Developing the relationship with Lionsgate and their Vice Chairman, Michael Burns. At the request of the ASU Foundation, Collis reconnected Burns with his alma mater. Over a 7 year period, Collis helped make the case to Burns that ASU had transformed into the most innovative and inclusive university in the world. The relationship was fruitful resulting in many class visits with students, the aforementioned Hollywood Sun Devil mixer, another ASU special event with President Crow at Lionsgate HQ, and a very special semester long case study of a Lionsgate feature film - one that had not yet been released into movie theaters. For the case study, each week leading up to the release, Burns sent over a new Lionsgate executive to teach the students about their role on the film. The movie was the surprise hit of winter 2017, Wonder, which students got to see at a special screening arranged by Lionsgate. Subsequently, Mr. Burns had the idea of asking Sidney Poitier to bequeath his name to ASU’s film school and personally asked the Poitier family on ASU’s behalf.
• Bringing Spike Lee to a sold-out audience of over 3,000 attendees at ASU’s Gammage Hall. For this event, Film Spark worked in association with the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy. Further, the event was strategically scheduled during the 3 Million Stories national conference for arts educators hosted by Steven Tepper, the Dean of ASU’s arts and design institute. The event served as a highly visible proof point of Dean Tepper’s Projecting All Voices initiative and of ASU’s fundamental commitment to inclusion.
• Putting together partnerships with The Third Floor Visualization (Gladiator II, Guardian of the Galaxy, Avatar: The Way of Water) and The John Hughes Institute, founded by Oscar-winning visual effects legend John Hughes (Babe, The Golden Compass, and Life of Pi). These partnerships allowed our students to learn Virtual Production, Visual Effects and Pre-Viz from the world’s best. The partnership also empowered students to learn cutting edge technologies and complete capstone projects during the challenges of Covid.
• Collaborating with Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) during Covid on their Black Joy & Resilience film screening and talkback series. By this time, ASU had made the decision to have a larger presence in Los Angeles. Keeping ASU’s advancement into Los Angeles in mind, Collis matched six notable ASU scholars with six of the filmmakers  for the post screening conversations, showcasing the scholars in this highly visible Los Angeles program.
• Partnering with Santa Monica College’s film and media production programs so deeply that, for eight years, SMC’s community college film students sat in on Collis’ weekly ASU film classes, giving ASU superior recruitment opportunity and immediate access to prime candidates for ASU’s film school.
• Producing exception screening events including:
  • A 3,500 attendee Jumbotron screening of Into the Spider-Verse at Sun Devil Stadium in partnership ASU Cultural Affairs. The event included a pre-recorded interview with the directors, and a tie-in between the movie’s hashtag, #AnyoneCanWearTheMask and the ASU Charter, which states that “ASU is a comprehensive public research university, measured not by whom it excludes, but by whom it includes and how they succeed…” Spiderman masks were given to all the children watching, and a movie screening was transformed into a powerful demonstration of inclusion as well as ASU’s commitment to this principle. Other special screening events include:
    • A 1,500 attendee Jumbotron stadium screening of feature film, Sorry to Bother You, followed by a live interview with visionary director Boots Riley in person, also on the Jumbotron.
    • A dual-site LA-Tempe screening of Black Panther with an LA-Tempe Zoom connected Q&A with producer Nate Moore.
    • A 150 person "Sing-A-Long" screening of La La Land with the casting directors of the film.
    • A 250 person sold out screening of Our Quinceañera with the director, Fanny Grande.
• Bringing many industry luminaries to Arizona to teach extraordinary weekend master classes including:
  • 3-time Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning producer Ted Hope, whose films have received 25 Oscar nominations and 3 wins. Hope taught about new horizons for independent films on two occasions, and, at the beckoning of Collis, taught two years at ASU’s Thunderbird School of Global Management.
  • The GM of Robert Rodriguez' El Rey Network, ASU alumnus Daniel Tibbets, who taught about the business of entertainment.
  • Veteran television director and co-chair of the DGA diversity committee, Bethany Rooney who taught on directing actors.
  • The former President and COO of Marvel Studios, ASU alumnus Michael Helfant, who taught about putting movie projects together.
  • Academy Award nominated Larry Sher, Cinematographer of Joker and The Hangover movies, who taught on the art of lighting for Cinema.
  • Four-time Motion Picture Sound Editors award-winning sound editor and designer, ASU alumnus Hamilton Sterling (Master and Commander, Logan, Gangs of New York, War of the Worlds, The Dark Knight, There Will Be Blood, The Tree of Life) who taught on Sound Design. 
  • And lastly,regularly hosting amazing classroom visits with the likes of legendary producers Chuck Roven (Oppenheimer), Nina Jacobson (Crazy Rich Asians) and Matt Tolmach (Venom, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, The Amazing Spider-Man); top Hollywood directors Patty Jenkins (Wonder Women), Jason Reitman (Saturday Night, Ghostburster: Afterlife, Up in the Air), Scott Derrickson (Doctor Strange), Bennett Miller (Moneyball, Capote) and Jaume Collet-Serra (Black Adam, Jungle Cruise), amazing department heads Dion Beebe (Oscar-winning Cinematographer of Collateral), Matt Jensen (Cinematographer of Wonder Woman and Game of Thrones), Phil Messina (Production Designer of The Hunger Games and Ocean’s Eleven), and Cynthia Charette (Production Designer of The Mysterious Benedict Society and Austin Powers), Peter Brown, (Sound Designer of Aquaman and Fast and Furious) and many other great A-list industry pros.

Collis is humbled and honored to be part of a team that helped grow ASU’s film school into what it is today. When Collis arrived at ASU in the fall of 2009, the film area had about 100 students. It is now the ASU Sidney Poitier New American Film School, serving over 1,000 students and led by the former President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, industry change-maker, Cheryl Boone Isaacs. In 2009, Collis and the film faculty taught in a modestly sized warehouse with no sound proofing. Today, thanks to the innovative and entrepreneurial approach of ASU President Michael Crow, the Poitier film school has brand new, state of the art $100MM sound stages, production equipment, and post facilities in Mesa, Arizona. In 2009, Collis commuted to Arizona every week of the school year. Today, Collis commutes to downtown Los Angeles where ASU has a branch of the Poitier film school and where ASU continues its mission to create access to higher education wherever it is needed.

Currently at ASU, Collis teaches a class on the film and television supply chain titled Welcome to Hollywood. It is a class designed to teach film production students about the business ecosystem that surrounds them. Collis also helps students obtain internships in the industry. He was recently honored by an invitation to become a Race, Arts and Democracy Fellowship at ASU’s Center for the Study of Race and Democracy. In his RAD Fellowship, he will be exploring ways in which Cinema can examine the complex issues of democracy, racial differences, and human connection. His upcoming research and scholarship will focus on the history and future of American movie theaters.

As for filmmaking, in January of 2024, Collis produced the low budget thriller, The Sintern, for FOX, MarVista and Tubi. Building on his love of making movies and teaching, the production had nearly two dozen former students working side by side with current student interns. Collis has several feature and series projects in various stages of development and looks forward to bringing his students and former students onto these productions as well.

Collis lives (and now works) in Los Angeles with his family and dogs. And, most importantly, he is certain that Funk will save the planet.