Arabella Cecil, Producer, Writer
Don Kempf, Producer
Keith Melton, Director
Reed Smoot, A.S.C., Director of Photography
Harry B. Miller III, A.C.E., Editor
Michael McDonough, M.P.S.E., Sound Designer
Sam Cardon, Music Composer
Arabella Cecil started her giant screen career in the late 1990s in South America where she joined the crew of the IMAX® film Amazon, which was nominated for an Academy Award® in 1998. Later that year she founded Gravity Pictures. From 1999, she worked with multiple award-winning director David Breashears, co-producing Kilimanjaro: To the Roof of Africa, his IMAX follow up to the blockbuster Everest. Kilimanjaro was released in March 2002.
Since 2002 she has written, directed, produced, shot and cut documentaries and political satire for television. She is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and a member of The Frontline Club of photojournalists and documentary filmmakers.
Before making films, Cecil spent eight years as an investment banker in Milan, Paris and London, and then worked as a photojournalist in Peru and Bolivia. Her photographs have been published in South America, Europe, and in the United States by National Geographic.
She speaks French, Spanish, and Italian, and is a PADI Divemaster. Arabella is a British citizen.
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Don Kempf is President and Co-Founder of Giant Screen Films, which specializes in the production and distribution of large-format/IMAX and feature documentaries. Kempf produced the critically acclaimed and successful large-format film Pulse: a STOMP Odyssey, a documentary directed by the creators of the off-Broadway sensation STOMP. Kempf also produced and co-directed the inspirational and successful large-format film Michael Jordan to the Max. He also served as executive producer on the acclaimed political documentary So Goes the Nation. In addition to Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs, Kempf is currently producing several additional large-format titles, including Dinosaurs Alive and Ocean Frenzy.
Kempf has a BA in history from Dartmouth College and an MBA in marketing and entrepreneurship from the University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business.
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Keith Melton has directed extensively in a variety of film formats for the past 15 years, including many large-format films. He has always been fascinated by telling unique stories within the detail-oriented "canvas" of the giant screen, and often integrates state-of-the-art technology and effects to support the stories he tells.
Keith’s most recent large format film is Mystic India which tells the story of a young yogi that traveled throughout India in the late 19th century. Keith directed Cirque Du Soleil: Journey of Man, which won Best Film at the 2000 GSTA conference and is one of most successful and widely acclaimed 3D large-format films. He also co-directed Country Music: the Spirit of America, a large-format film that parallels the history of country music with the history of America in the 20th century. In other formats, he directed and co-produced along with Douglas Trumbull To Dream of Roses, a ground-breaking film made for the 1990 Osaka World Expo where high definition was blown up to 70mm for the first time. He is the only director to have been asked back to make a second specialty film for Toyota's unique film theater at its corporate headquarters in Tokyo. He directed the James Bond themed License to Thrill, the most complex live action ride film ever made. He also directed Pirates, a 70mm 3-D comedy that has played to great success throughout the world.
Keith is a member of the LFCA, GSTA, and AMPAS, where he helps select the finalists for Academy Award consideration in the Live Action Short category.
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Reed Smoot is one of the most sought-after large format cinematographers in the world. Reed has served as Director of Photography on numerous feature films and television productions for over twenty five years.
He has specialized in the production and photography of large-format films. Reed has worked on over twenty five LF films including Grand Canyon: The Hidden Secrets, Mysteries of Egypt, Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure, Mysteries of the Nile, Cirque Du Soleil: the Journey of Man and Mystic India, the latter two in collaboration with Director, Keith Melton. He has won the Giant Screen Theater Association "Best Large Format Cinematography Award" three times and was awarded the KODAK Vision Award for contributions to Large Format Cinematography. He enjoys the special challenges and potential of large-format filmmaking and found working on Mummies especially rewarding. "This project was an amazing opportunity to revisit a familiar subject and to go way beyond anything that we've done before."
He is an active member of the Giant Screen Cinema Association, The American Society of Cinematographers, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
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Harry Miller is a picture and sound editor, who works in the feature film and television business. He grew up in Lexington, KY, with his parents Harry Jr. and Pat, and three siblings. He attended Boston University and the University of Kentucky where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts.
In 1978 he attended USC Cinema where he earned a Master of Fine Arts in Film Production. He has since worked in the Southern California film business. His credits include Cirque du Soleil: Journey of Man, Mystic India, Gladiator, Tremors 4, and Bones. He and his wife Nancy have a son, Winn.
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Michael McDonough is a veteran sound designer on 19 large-format films, starting with Polynesian Odyssey in 1988. He has done sound design on such Imax films as Amazon, Mysteries of Egypt, Shackleton’s Antarctic Adventure, Lewis and Clark, Olympic Glory, Forces of Nature, and most recently Roving Mars. He was awarded the Golden Reel Award for best sound on Island of the Sharks by the Motion Picture Sound Editors.
Along with his work in large-format, Michael is also active in television documentaries and independent film sound, and maintains a post-production sound facility in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is also the recipient of the George Foster Peabody Award for a radio drama series he produced and directed for National Public Radio entitled “Bradbury 13”.
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Sam Cardon is an Emmy winning composer whose credits include scores for over 30 feature films as well as the large-format films: Lewis and Clark, The Legendary Journeys, Mystic India, Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure and Mysteries of Egypt (one of the top-grossing IMAX films of all time.)
In addition, he has written or co-written such themes as National Geographic Explorer, ABC Sports, and Good Morning America. He scored three hours of original music for the 1988 Winter Olympic Games in Calgary as well as music for closing ceremonies at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games.
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