Boyd Estus is a motion picture Director of Photography and Producer/Director whose credits include the Academy Award winning The Flight of the Gossamer Condor and the Academy Award nominee Eight Minutes to Midnight as well as many Emmy winning television productions.  He is noted for his elegant work in 35mm, Super-16mm and 16mm film, and in high definition, standard, and digital video.  He has shot and/or directed a wide range of material from feature films to cinema verité documentaries on locations around the world.

Mr. Estus has made films for many of the celebrated television series on PBS (e.g., NOVA, Frontline, The American Experience, American Masters, Eyes on the Prize), the BBC and other overseas broadcasters, commercial television networks (e.g., the long-running Unsolved Mysteries, Spenser For Hire), the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, the National Geographic Society, the Smithsonian Institution, leading corporations and independent film producers. 

His recent projects include Louisa May Alcott:  The Woman Behind Little Women; Woody Guthrie:  I Ain’t Got No Home (American Masters);  Living in Utopia;  Typhoid Mary: The Most Dangerous Woman in America (NOVA);  Murder at Harvard;  The Powder and the Glory (Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden);  Annie Oakley, and Houdini (American Experience).  Currently in production are Mr. Emerson’s Revolution, Becoming Helen Keller, and Turmoil and Triumph:  The Life of George Shultz.

Mr. Estus has extensive experience in the production of films dealing with history, music and science and in making these subjects understandable and vivid to a wide audience.  He is an innovator in the development of  “docu-drama” technique for compelling storytelling.

Feature credits include Good Will Hunting, Foreign Affairs, Kurt Vonnegut’s Between Time and Timbuktu, Dawn of Our Nation and the Klezmer music feature A Jumpin’ Night in the Garden of Eden.  Corporate clients include Merrill Lynch, American Express, Polaroid Corporation, and the Harvard Business School, as well as major pharmaceutical and computer companies and advertising agencies.

In addition to the Academy Awards, Mr. Estus has received numerous awards including the CINE Golden Eagle (Louisa May Alcott, Where the Galaxies Are, Arthur Fiedler--Just Call Me Maestro, Flight of the Gossamer Condor), Melbourne International Film Festival Kino Award (So Many Galaxies...So Little Time), the Peabody Award (NOVA, Tender Places), the Cindy, Emmy, Telly, Hugo, and many others.  His work has been screened at international film festivals.

Mr. Estus is President and cofounder of Heliotrope Studios Ltd. in the Boston, Massachusetts, area, providing production and post-production services and facilities.  He was a founding member of the film unit at WGBH-TV in Boston.

RECENT PROJECTS