Biography
James Cooper is known for directing David Oyelowo in the award-winning noir short "206" shot in Brooklyn, New York City. Cooper recently co-directed, edited and hand animated the award-winning official music video, 'Con Man' for Liam Finn (Crowded House). Finn and Cooper also co-directed the official music video for Finn's newest single together, 'The Howl' lifted from his forthcoming 'Hyperverse' record due in June, 2025.
James was born in Sydney, Australia and began his filmmaking career as visual effects assistant at Garner MacLennan Design. Here he worked as a post production assistant on feature films "Rabbit Proof Fence", "The Quiet American" (both directed by Phillip Noyce), Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" and the Farscape television series. In Sydney he assisted on hundreds of television commercials, music videos, titles and indent design projects for Australian and New Zealand free to air and cable television networks. James then moved to be an assistant in the pre-vizualization department at Australia's Fox Studios on Baz Luhrmann's musical "Moulin Rouge!".
A musician as well as a filmmaker, around this time James also created a score for a friend's short film and recorded an extended play single with his band which went on to receive rotation on youth radio station Triple J. After completing his bachelor's degree in Visual Communications in Sydney, James spent several years in London as a record sleeve art director. He designed covers for hundreds of artists and groups including Paul McCartney and David Bowie. In London he experimented further with video and music as an art form and was hired by Universal Music to become a musical director and session musician for new groups. With Universal he toured Europe extensively as a performer. James became a creative consultant for many brands in Europe and created concepts for large scale advertising campaigns, music tours, and entertainment properties as an art director and creative technologist. James also began creating short films and distributing them online. Inspired by what the new advances in technology now allowed him to create, James then gained his certificate in filmmaking at Met Film School, Ealing Studios, London. Shortly after this he immersed himself in shooting, directing and editing an array of short web films and was subsequently signed as a director for commercials and content. He won an ICAD award in Dublin for his series of three mini-documentary films profiling Irish singer Fionn Regan for Universal Music.
James has since directed commercials, short films and content campaigns all over the world for leading brands Apple, Mercedes Benz, Disney Channel, Visit California and Adidas. James also edits much of his work and was lead editor on a Hulu mini-series 'The Driver' in 2017.
In 2018 and 2019 James was a resident screenwriter at Australians In Film at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood.
Along with film James continues to write and create music. He has released several albums. In 2006, "Beautiful As You", a song he co-wrote with Tim Freedman, front man to Australian group The Whitlams appeared on the double album "Little Cloud and the Apple's Eye" distributed by Warner Music. In 2007 a new, faster version of the song was recorded by the group to be released as a single. It would go on to become a top 10 single on the ARIA Australian Artists chart. The song was performed live by The Whitlams at the Australia Day Concert broadcast nationally around Australia on January 25th, 2007. He often marries his musical experience with film and works closely with composers when scoring commercials or film.
James is also an exhibiting fine artist specializing in abstract expressionism. His paintings are held in private collections in the USA and Australia and he has been selected twice by world art experts to show as part of the Other Art Fair in both Sydney and Melbourne, presented by Saatchi Art.
