| JAVIER PRATO's Biography |
Javier Prato was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He began his devotion to filmmaking at the early age of 14 when his father gave him a video camera for his birthday. First he began using the camera basically as a toy by videoing everything which passed in front of him. In high school, he talked his best friends into playing actors. He used to call that process “instant films,” because he would build the story at the same time his friends were being videoed. Later he discovered, by using two VHS video recorders, one for playback and the other for recording, he could do editing.
In his last year of high school, he had a wonderful revelation that his video-making hobby could be transformed into a filmmaking professional career. He euphorically rushed to a film seminar of basic filmmaking, and then to another one which covered screenwriting. The filmmaking seminar was instructed by Rodolfo Hermida, a prominent Argentine teacher and TV producer. The screenwriting seminar was instructed by Beda Docampo Feijóo, an astonishing Argentine film director, who had also achieved prominent recognition as a screenwriter. (Beda docampo Feijóo was nominated for an Oscar in 1988 for the script of the film “Camila.”) After the aforedescribed experiences, Javier was even more convinced and confident about his filmmaking goals. When he finished the seminar with Rodolfo Hermida, Javier recalls Mr. Hermida saying “the best way to study film, is to go to the United States.” Following this advice, Javier began taking English language classes, while he learned about television production at “Taller de Imagen y Sonido,” a two-year college in the heart o
f Buenos Aires.
In 1998 Javier moved to Los Angeles to pursue his filmmaking career. He originally planned to go to USC (University of Southern California), but after rethinking his career goals and talking to some prominent film directors in the movie industry, he came to the conclusion that having a degree in film is not the most important tool to have in order to be a successful film director. So he decided to continue his studies on actual film sets and take classes in other prominent educational areas such as acting, psychology, speech and literature at LACC (Los Angeles City College).
His short films have screened at various film festivals around the world and his satirical short “Jesus Christ: The Musical” became one of the most viewed videos on the Internet to date. Javier also entered the “YouTube Project Direct” film competition and his film “Empty Arms” was selected as one of the top 20 finalists by a panel led by the award winning director of “Juno” Jason Reitman.
In 2007 he received an MBA in Entertainment and New Media at the University of Palermo, led by Al Lieberman, technology and media Director at NYU (New York University.) In early 2008 he partnered with Mexican Director Orlette Ruiz to form the production company “Gadget Films,” which their main focus is to create sponsored online short video content for Internet viral distribution. He is also the president and founder of “Instant Crew”, a website that helps film & video producers find crew members for their productions.