Claire Edmondson cut her teeth as a director shooting conversation-generating music videos for Austra’s ‘Beat and the Pulse’ and Broken Social Scene’s ‘Sweetest Kill’. She hit the commercial scene in 2015 with the launch of ‘I’m a Boxer’ for Everlast, which addressed the insulting ways that people use ‘female’ as a needless moniker and was featured in the likes of Buzzfeed and Huffington Post. 

She’s a Liverpudlian by birth but left the north-English city for Toronto, Canada, where she spent much of her youth. Nowadays she’s repped as a director in that market by Steam Films and Doomsday Entertainment in LA for the US market. 

We hit her up for her Essential List to get to know her more.

Travel

o Place of birth: Liverpool, England

o Hometown: Toronto / LA

o Staycation: In LA I consider Palm Springs a staycation

o Vacation: Currently planning a trip to Greece

o Place of work: Wherever location set turns out to be. Or Steam Films (Toronto) or Doomsday Entertainment (LA)

o Place of workout: Griffith Park Hikes

o Mode of transport: A vintage Volvo. Really it’s just old, but vintage sounds better

o Miscellaneous Travel Essential: Sunscreen

Culture

o Artist: I think Tau Lewis, a young up-and-coming Toronto artist is the most interesting person in the art world right now

o Musician: All time favourites include Depeche Mode and Kanye West. Although I’m mad at Kanye for his “Bill Cosby is innocent” tweet

o Film director: Lynch, Haneke, Coppola (Sofia)

o Photographer: Juergen Teller for his humour

o Film: Mulholland Drive 

o Series: Atlanta, Fleebag

o Commercial: Nagi Noda’s Coke Commercial

o Music Video: Classics like Hole ‘Malibu’, George Michael ‘Freedom’, Pass This On ‘The Knife’

o Video Game: Does Words With Friends count as a video game?

o Board Game: Does Sudoku count here?

o Book: Anything Joan Didion or Jeffrey Eugenides

Joan Didion in front of her Daytona Yellow Stingray Corvette

o Graphic Novel: Black Hole by Charles Burns

o Newspaper (off or online): NYT – their work on the Weinstein expose has changed the course for women forever and we are just getting started

o Magazine: Purple

Food and Drink

o Breakfast: Coffee

o Restaurant: Salazar

o Cheap bite: Taco trucks

o Working lunch:  Some sort of salad / veggie bowl

o Snack:  Macadamia nuts

o Guilty Pleasure: BREAD

Claire's culinary kryptonite

o Bar: Hotel bars

o Tipple: Tequila

o Soft Tipple: Mezcal

o Miscellaneous food: Ramen, tuna sashimi

o Miscellaneous Beverage: Green smoothies

Kit

o Phone: iPhone

o Computer: MacBook Pro

o Headphones: AIAIAI earbuds

o Pen / pencil: Retro 1951 Tornado (black)

o Where you document an idea: Note app on my iPhone

o Casual wear: Jeans

o Smart wear: Jeans with some sort of heeled boot or shoe

o Footwear: Depends on my mood / look

o App: Whatever can deliver food. Habit Bull

o Work program: Final Draft. Random note: when working at home I find the Pomodoro Technique very helpful and I sit outside with my plants on the breaks between

o Analogue work tool: So many notebooks

o Morning grooming / makeup essential: Exfoliator