Michael Coulson (director and producer)
Michael Coulson is a director and producer, and an innovator, in the fields of graphic design, film and television and interactive media.
MUSCLE FILMS 1977 -1991 Coulson was part of a new wave of graphic artists and punk filmmakers in London and, in a partnership with artist/filmmaker Nichola Bruce, founded Muscle Films, a film and television company, producing offbeat programming for British TV and cinema. Coulson and Bruce created paintings as the starting point for their films and later developed scripts from the images. Film and TV credits include: “The Human Face”, an arts documentary for the BBC, with Laurie Anderson, “Wings of Death”, an award - winning drama for British Film Institute and Channel 4.
KRUDDART As artists Founded Kruddart, a design company producing anarchic, collage-based material. Design briefs include: Faber & Faber book cover designs for authors such as Allan Gurganus, Lorie Moore, Ellen Gilchrist and Charlotte Cory, work for the film industry including storyboards for directors: John Boorman, Neil Jordan - Company of Wolves, Julien Temple, Richard Lester, as well as film posters for British distributors Palace Pictures and the British Film Institute, including the highly influential “The Draughtsman’s Contract” poster design and marketing campaign for Peter Greenaway.
PETER GABRIEL In 1992 Peter Gabriel, who admired Coulson and Bruce’s Human Face documentary, invited them to co-ordinate the release of Peter Gabriel's album, US. In a highly original approach to record marketing campaign they collaborated with artists Helen Chadwick, Rebecca Horn, Nils-Udo, Andy Goldsworthy, David Mach and Yayoi Kusama, to create original artworks for each of the 11 songs on the multi-million selling CD and documented the process on Hi-8video. Bruce left Real World and Coulson continued with the campaign, using the documentary background material as the basis for promotional videos, a long form video: All About Us and interactive media.
REALWORLD From1993-1997 as Creative Director for Peter Gabriel’s Real World company, Coulson helped set up a design multi media company for Real World. He worked closely with Peter Gabriel and oversaw the design and production of all visual material, developing poster campaigns for WOMAD and art directing CD and packaging design for Real World Design.
INTERACTIVE MEDIA From1993-1997 as Creative Director for Real World, he developed new forms of innovative digital interactive entertainment, including “Xplora”, with Steve Nelson of Brilliant Media, one of the world’s first music CD-ROMs which one 12 international awards and was seen as a step towards a new musical form, “Radio Real World”, the first website for Peter Gabriel, and “EVE”, a music and art adventure game which merged the worlds of art, music and science, produced with Paul Allen’s Starwave Corporation in the USA, for which he won the highest awards given by the industry, including the Milia D’or Grand Prize at Cannes 1997.
THREE HUMANS INC In the late 1990s Coulson moved to New York and started Three Humans Inc in 2001, a company which produces creative programming for film, television, and interactive media.
PERSONAL Michael Coulson was born in Barnstaple North Devon in 1952.