BIOGRAPHY John R. Paulson is a veteran producer, director, editor, and cinematographer and owner and president of John Paulson Productions, LLC. His company developed and completed production of a feature-length documentary in high definition on the legendary guitarist, inventor, and showman Les Paul for PBS/American Masters. Recently he completed production of the performance show 3 Mo' Divas for PBS Pledge and HD cinematography for a film on the creation of the Smithsonian Institution’s landmark National Museum of the American Indian building, for which he also produced several videos. He was producer and director of high definition photography for the Smithsonian’s Silk Road Festival, a sprawling display of music, craft, and culture spanning the modern-day Silk Road, with performances by cellist Yo Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble. He also completed production on Oklahoma!, the latest in a series of children's adaptations of Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals, and edited and supervised post production for the worldwide television dance spectacular Fury. He also edited a television pilot for From The Top, the hit public radio series which is soon to be a television series on PBS.
For 12 years Mr. Paulson was a
filmmaker at Smithsonian Productions, the media production group of the
Smithsonian Institution, where he created the award-winning exhibit film
Woody Guthrie: Legacy
featuring Billy Bragg, Bruce Springsteen, Ani DiFranco, and Arlo
Guthrie. He also produced
Guide to the Smithsonian a visitor orientation overview of the sprawling complex of
Smithsonian museums. He was also director of photography for the television
documentary
Three Hundred Years of
People and Pianos broadcast on PBS and worldwide in
2001, and documentary unit director of high definition photography and segment editor for the
PBS special
Piano Grand: A
Smithsonian Celebration
starring Billy
Joel. At the Smithsonian, Mr. Paulson filmed, edited, or produced dozens
of programs on subjects ranging from science, fine and performing arts, history,
and the cultural traditions of the world.
Mr. Paulson’s skills, interests, and experiences are varied. In late 2002 he traveled to Vietnam as a guest of the Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi to train a team of Vietnamese museum staff in the craft of film making. In 2008 he appeared at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's week-long tribute "Les Paul - American Music Master" where he presented the film Les Paul - Chasing Sound and spoke on a panel discussion of Les Paul's life and accomplishments.
Paulson Productions is currently developing and/or producing various properties ranging from The Best Crab Cake Ever, a fun-filled and mouth-watering look at Chesapeake Bay crab cake culture and cuisine, to Photographing the American Presidency, a feature documentary on the personal photographers of the Presidents featuring unprecedented behind-the-scenes verité footage at the White House, to an examination of the surge in dominance of professional football as epitomized by coaching giant Vince Lombardi and his "Winning isn't everything...it's the only thing" philosophy. In the past he has produced films on the allure of the banjo, Banjo Spirits; the disappearing native Ojibwa craft of birch-bark canoe building, Earl’s Canoe; contemporary Nigerian artists, The Poetics of Line; and the Smithsonian’s big band Jazz Masterworks Orchestra.
He is a member of the Director's Guild of America and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. His work has been screened around the world on broadcast television, on home video, and at numerous film festivals. He has been nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award and is the winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, the Silver TELLY Award, the Silver Hugo Award from the Chicago International Film Festival, American Association of Museums Silver MUSE Award, the CINE Golden Eagle, the Gold CINDY Award, a New York Festivals Finalist, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Gold and Silver Medals, and many others. Mr. Paulson was educated at The American University, where he received his Master of Arts in Film Production, and at Southern Illinois University. He is an avid and skilled photographer and enjoys brewing beer.
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