Karni Baghdikian – Director
On the heels of his directorial debut short TRADE, Karni was invited to direct his second narrative short film, Annex Film Group’s production of Written By, penned by Trevor Boelter and Matt Duggan, as he completed his final quarter at the UCLA Professional Program in Screenwriting and produced digital campaigns for an ad agency.
Karni’s first taste of Hollywood magic came at 15 as a background actor in Scent of a Woman, where he was compensated handsomely for cutting school and experiencing three days of Al Pacino’s Academy Award winning performance. After student assisting in his high school TV Productions class before taking a decade-long hiatus from production to study beer and rugby at Babson College, Karni resurfaced with a B.S. in MIS/Finance, an appetite for visual arts, and a profound desire to make movies for the rest of his life.
In 2003, Karni began to see the convergence of film, video and the Internet, and created an online production company called InstinctMedia. The purpose was two-pronged: one, to put himself directly in the crossroads of two colliding industries with market-changing implications, and two, to earn a living creatively, developing websites and producing 3D multimedia projects, while reading voraciously about filmmaking, and whether or not he should go to film school.
In 2005, Karni moved to Los Angeles, and stumbled into a part-time filmmaking career, geeking out any time he could get on set, and wearing any hat he could–most commonly, Assistant Directing short films, web and music videos, and commercials–while supporting his love of adventure with a day job producing digital campaigns for Kia Motors at David&Goliath.
Prior professional stints include digital art direction at DDB and digital production for Monster.com, as well as online and digital marketing of $40 million films for Fox Atomic, where his team quietly set records for video player sizes and video data rates, and strategized in chalk about how to grow online communities that would ultimately draw bigger theatrical audiences.
Fun as that all was, Karni became addicted to boxofficemojo.com and left agency life behind in late 2009 to pursue full time occupation in film and TV production. When he’s not working on a production or promoting Written By, he’s sneaking into episodic online panels at the WGA and building confidence in the world of webisodic content seeding, because that train is leaving the station and he will darned well be on it.
You should know that his three favorite inventions are film, beer, and the Internet, and his personal portfolio and blog can be found at www.karni.tv. And tomorrow is his Birthday.
