Biography
Michael W. Abbott is a multi-media Producer & Director of Motion Pictures, Documentaries, Unscripted Television, Branded Content and Music Festival Live Streaming Original Content.
A Los Angeles native, Abbott attended the University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television, with an emphasis on Critical Studies. He was honored twice with the Cinema-Television School's Mary Pickford Award for academic excellence and was bestowed the University's Senior Recognition Award upon graduation. Abbott began his career in entertainment at Savoy Pictures in Santa Monica as a Marketing Financial Analyst for films such as "A Bronx Tale", "Circle of Friends" and the documentary "The Show". While at Savoy, Michael produced the festival winning music documentary on rave culture, "Synergy: Visions of Vibe" directed by Valerian Bennett. In 1999, Abbott launched the Coachella Independent Film Festival aka "The Film Tent" at The Coachella Music and Arts Festival, curating director-driven music- driven films, shorts and music videos on site to Coachella attendees.
Between 2000-2006, Abbott was a Creative Executive for No Prisoners ("Wing Commander") and helped launch Ascendant Pictures ("Lucky Number Slevin", "Lord Of War") as Chris Roberts' first hire for the Company. In 2007, Abbott produced the documentary film "Stripped: Greg Friedler's Naked Las Vegas", which premiered on Showtime Networks and became one of the top five most watched documentary films of all time on Showtime. Abbott followed up "Stripped" as an Associate Producer on Cecilia Miniucchi's narrative feature film "Expired" starring Samantha Morton and Jason Patric. The premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and had its International Premiere at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival in the 46th International Critics' Week.
Abbott pivoted his focus into branded documentary content following "Expired" and in 2007 he would serve both producer and director duties for the GM/Cadillac series MyCadillacStory; a two-year campaign featuring short docs on Travis Barker, Wynton Marsalis, Coach K among others and would become the 5th most watched branded channel on YouTube in 2009. Abbott continued directing duties with "Motivation", an award-winning online commercial for Namco Bandai's hit video game Tekken 6 starring Evander Holyfield, Henry Tillman, Josh Barnett and a slew of other world-class fighters. In 2012 Abbott was the cinematographer for the global hit documentary "After Porn Ends". The film would become the most watched documentary on Netflix for the next two years and spin off two hit sequel documentary films.
In 2015, Abbott produced One Direction's hit music video for "Steal My Girl" starring Danny DeVito and go on to be seen over 230,000,000 times on YouTube. Abbott expand his scope of documentary branded content directing to broadcast cable television as the Executive Producer & Director of Season 2 of "The Navigator Live", a 5-episode Marriott / Renaissance Hotels backed ½-hour music travel TV series which aired on the cable network AXS featuring artists The Lone Bellow, AWOLNATION, Cut Copy, A-Trak and MSMR.
Between 2016-2017, Abbott produced a series of online branded documentary commercial campaigns for Microsoft Surface Products with Azyenberg Group and his third feature documentary film, "The Cadillac Tramps: Life On The Edge" directed by Jamie Sims Coakley. In 2018, Abbott produced the Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers music video "Gainesville", Warby Parker's commercial "Happy Dance" and Paul McCartney's musical short film "Who Cares" starring Emma Stone, with director Brantley Gutierrez. Abbott's would also produce his fourth feature documentary film, "A Cam Life", which premiered on Hulu on March 26th, 2019.
In 2019, Abbott was brought in to launch Weekend Two's "Coachella Curated" Live Stream as its lead Director, Writer and Senior Producer for original content and as Senior Producer of Weekend One's Live Stream. The two weekends would go on to break all YouTube and Coachella webcast records with 171 Million views over 10 days.
His fifth feature documentary film which he produced, "Coachella: 20 Years In The Desert" premiered on YouTube Originals in April of 2020 to critical acclaim and over 1.1 million views in 48 hours. Abbott's work can also be seen in the Apple documentary "Billie Eilish: The World's A Little Blurry". Abbott's directing, producing, interviewing and camera duties captured in Salt Lake City opens the film.
In 2021, Abbott Directed and Executive Produced "Even Higher Together", a 5 hour streaming musical event from Weedmaps hosted by Snoop Dogg and featuring Mike Tyson, Ms Pat, Too Short, G Eazy Jaleel White with performances from ASAP Rocky, Jhene Aiko, Wiz Khalifa & The Taylor Gang, Bam Marley and Eric Rachmany of Rebelution. Abbott teamed up with Brantley Gutierrez once again to produce the music video "Survivor" for Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats as an homage to "Raging Bull" and Wes Anderson films. He closed out 2021 as the Producer and Director of original content and the live host stage for the 25th Anniversary live stream of EDC Las Vegas, the largest electronic dance music festival in North America. For the first-time ever, the festival streamed all eight festival stages across multiple platforms including YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, Lomotif and Roblox to record numbers of viewers captured with over 75 cameras.
Abbott is in pre-production on the narrative motion picture "The War of 84" at Netflix, producing the film with Screen Arcade ("Narcos", "I, Tonya") from an original story by Abbott & Andrew Weiss ("White Boy Rick").
