Lance Acord

Lance Acord ASC^[1] is an American cinematographer and film director. He is best known for his work on the films, Buffalo '66 (1998), Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation (2002), and Lost in Translation (2003).

Lance Acord
Acord at Sundance 2015
Occupation(s)	Cinematographer, Film director

Early life

Acord studied photography and filmmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute.^[2][3]

Career

Cinematographer

Acord began his career with photographer/filmmaker Bruce Weber, which whom he made documentaries, commercials and music videos. His breakthrough came after he shot the music video for Björk's "Big Time Sensuality", directed by Stéphane Sednaoui. Acord continued to work extensively in commercials and music videos through the 1990s. He earned the MTV Video Music Award for Best Cinematography for his work on the Fatboy Slim music video for "Weapon of Choice", which featured Christopher Walken and was directed by Spike Jonze. He also worked with R.E.M. on a regular basis.

Acord made his first foray into narrative feature filmmaking as the cinematographer of Vincent Gallo's Buffalo '66 (1998). He shot Spike Jonze's films Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation (2002), and Where the Wild Things Are (2009), Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation (2003), Marie Antoinette (2006), and her short film Lick the Star (1998), as well as Peter Care's The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002).

Commercial director

In the late 1990s, Acord began to transition to commercial directing and in 1998, together with his business partner Jackie Kelman Bisbee, he founded the commercial production company Park Pictures. He received 35 Cannes Lions for his work with clients such as Nike, Apple, HP, Volkswagen, P&G, Subaru. He was nominated for Best Commercial Director by the DGA in 2003, 2011, 2012, and 2017. In 2011, his Super Bowl spot for Volkswagen, "The Force", was named the best ad of 2011 by AdWeek, Creativity, and YouTube and consistently ranks on lists of the greatest Super Bowl commercials of all time. His Apple film "Misunderstood" won the 2014 Emmy Award for Outstanding Commercial. In 2019, he won his second Emmy award for the Nike commercial "Dream Crazy," starring Colin Kaepernick.

In 2019, directed the short film commercial for Xfinity, A Holiday Reunion, based on the film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and starring Henry Thomas, who reprises his role as Elliott.

Filmography

Director of photography

Short film

Year	Title	Director	Notes
1992	Billy Nayer	Cory McAbee
1995	Gentle Giants	Bruce Weber
1997	How They Get There	Spike Jonze
1998	Amarillo by Morning		Documentary short
	Lick the Star	Sofia Coppola
2000	Eventual Wife	Bryan Bantry Dave Diamond
2012	Ed Ruscha, Woody and the World's Hottest Pepper	Himself
2013	Apple Misunderstood
2019	E.T.: A Holiday Reunion		TV special

Feature film

Year	Title	Director
1998	Buffalo '66	Vincent Gallo
1999	Being John Malkovich	Spike Jonze
2001	Southlander	Steve Hanft
2002	The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys	Peter Care
	Adaptation	Spike Jonze
2003	Lost in Translation	Sofia Coppola
2006	Marie Antoinette
2009	Where the Wild Things Are	Spike Jonze
2014	God's Pocket	John Slattery

Documentary film

Year	Title	Director	Notes
1998	Free Tibet	Sarah Pirozek
2001	Chop Suey	Bruce Weber	With James D. Cooper and Jim Fealy
2012	Wild in the Streets	Peter Baxter	With Peter Baxter, Terrence Hayes, Laurent Malaquais and Mark Williams
2018	Nice Girls Don't Stay for Breakfast	Bruce Weber

Music videos

Year	Artist	Title	Director	Notes
1993	The Smashing Pumpkins	"Cherub Rock"	Kevin Kerslake
	Björk	"Big Time Sensuality"	Stéphane Sednaoui
1994	Youssou N'Dour and Neneh Cherry	"7 Seconds"
	MC Solaar	"Nouveau Western"
	G. Love & Special Sauce	"Cold Beverage"	Mark Romanek
	Sonic Youth	"Superstar"	Dave Markey
1995	R.E.M.	"Crush with Eyeliner"	Spike Jonze
	Ween	"Freedom of '76"
	Waterlillies	"Never Get Enough"	Christina Wayne
	Method Man featuring Mary J. Blige	"I'll Be There for You/You're All I Need to Get By"	Diane Martel
	Method Man & Redman	"How High"
	Björk	"It's Oh So Quiet"	Spike Jonze
	Elastica	"Car Song"
1997	Daft Punk	"Da Funk"
	Pond	"Spokes"	Mike Mills
	The Chemical Brothers	"Elektrobank"	Spike Jonze
	Björk	"Bachelorette"	Michel Gondry
	The Notorious B.I.G.	"Sky's the Limit"	Spike Jonze
1998	R.E.M.	"Lotus"	Stéphane Sednaoui
	Fatboy Slim	"Praise You"	Spike Jonze	With Lance Bangs
1999	The Chemical Brothers	"Let Forever Be"	Michel Gondry
	Tricky	"For Real"	Stéphane Sednaoui
2001	Fatboy Slim	"Weapon of Choice"	Spike Jonze
	Dave Matthews Band	"Everyday"	Chuck McBride
2003	The White Stripes	"I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself"	Sofia Coppola
2004	Yeah Yeah Yeahs	"Y Control"	Spike Jonze
2005	Björk	"Triumph of a Heart"

Producer

• Robot & Frank (2012)
• God's Pocket (2014)

Executive producer

• The New Tenants (2009) (Short film)
• Cop Car (2015)
• Other People (2016)
• The Rehearsal (2016)
• The Hero (2017)
• An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn (2018)
• The Sentence (2018)
• Hearts Beat Loud (2018)
• Lazy Susan (2019) (Short film)
• Farewell Amor (2020)
• The Last Shift (2020)
• The Truffle Hunters (2020) (Documentary)
• The Heart Still Hums (2020) (Documentary short)
• Born to Play (2020) (Documentary)
• Another Hayride (2021) (Documentary short)
• Long Weekend (2021)
• There There (2022)
• Aisha (2022)
• Broadway Rising (2022) (Documentary)
• The Independent (2022)
• Earth Mama (2023)
• Late Bloomers (2023)
• Flipside (2023)