Tyron Montgomery

Tyron Montgomery (born April 29, 1967) is an Oscar winning film director and media creative. Originally raised in Ireland, near Limerick, Montgomery today is a German citizen, living and working in Munich.

After studying physics in Wuppertal, Tyron Montgomery studied visual communication at the School of Fine Arts in Kassel, focusing on film, animation, and photography. He passed with distinction in 1998.

In 1996, while still a student, he directed his debut film "Quest" which should become the most successful German short film ever, winning the Academy Award for the Best Animated Short Film and more than 40 international awards. Especially the Oscar let the unknown student shoot to fame almost overnight.

In 1997, as the youngest person in history, Tyron Montgomery was decorated with the Goethe Badge of Honor by the Ministry of Arts & Science of Hesse "in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the cultural landscape of the State of Hesse" as is says in the ministry's official statement.

In the same year, a liaison with the French actress Aurélia Nolin, best-known for playing "Lena" in Éric Rohmer's movie A Summer's Tale, lead Tyron Montgomery to Paris where he lived and worked the following three years, especially as lighting director and video artist for theater productions. But mainly he worked in London and Bristol on technically challenging commercials as director, lighting cameraman, and VFX supervisor. During this period, he developed the Interlaced Light Recording, a special recording procedure which reduces costs while allowing more flexibility in the post-production.

In 1997, Tyron Montgomery founded his own film production company (Montgomery Film) und produced "Our Garden", the world's first stop motion film for the cinema screen that was recorded and processed entirely digital. "Our Garden" was commissioned by the German Ministry of the Environment as opening film of an open-air show touring the country.

Having programmed since the early eighties and having created websites for himself, since the early nineties, Montgomery founded a second company for web design, multimedia productions and application development in 1998 – the "X-Plosive Media Network". Uncommonly but successfully X-Plosive was operated as a unique teleworking experiment: The twenty web designers and programmers of the network were scattered across the globe and actually never met in person.

The same year, the production of the feature film "The Green Cloud", based on Alexander Neill's famous novel "The Last Man Alive", lead Tyron Montgomery to Germany once more. For 18 months he worked on the movie as VFX supervisor and his two production companies produced all model shots as well as a number of effects and animation sequences.

As a result of this work, Tyron Montgomery relocated from Paris to Munich in Germany. Montgomery Film and X-Plosive Media were merged to "Augenreiz", a single production company for Internet, multimedia and film projects. Today, supported by a network of partners, Augenreiz operates as a full-service agency for clients in Germany, Switzerland and other countries.

In 2004, Tyron Montgomery married the German jewelry designer Anne Gericke. They have two children: Daughter "Ava" (born December 19, 2002) and son "Arian" (born March 10, 2008).

Since 1997, Tyron Montgomery has been giving lectures at several German universities and film schools. He regularly leads workshops, gives speeches at film festivals and fairs, and is often invited as a jury member of film, multimedia, and design awards, such as the red dot design award.

External links

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* [http://www.awn.com/mag/issue3.11/3.11pages/montgomerygarden.php3 Production report on "Our Garden"] on the Animation World Network