David Bolen is an award-winning Canadian cinematographer and director based out of Los Angeles, California. Born in Toronto to a family of filmmakers and journalists, David was exposed to cameras at a very young age.

An alumnus of the prestigious USC School of Cinematic Arts, David has worked consistently as a cinematographer and director since graduating in 2013. In addition to shooting feature documentaries such as the award-winning feature documentary The Dropbox, which will be released in Fall 2014, David has filmed over 30 short films, 20 music videos, 15 commercials, and numerous behind-the-scenes for several hit shows, including It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Glee. David is also experienced as a director, selected at USC to direct a 480 thesis film entitled Hotel Vernonia (2013).

David's most recent collaborations have been with director Ben Proudfoot of Breakwater Studios. Working for Breakwater as a cinematographer and director, he has shot several live-action opening title sequences for Warner Bros. and Darkwoods Productions. David recently traveled to Africa to capture Proudfoot’s Kigali/Verona, a feature length documentary chronicling a Shakespeare scholar mounting Romeo and Juliet in Rwanda 20 years after the genocide. David is currently directing two pilot episodes of Haven: Origins, a origin story spinoff series for Stephen King’s Haven, which airs on Syfy.

David Nieman is an Ohio-born, New Hampshire-raised, artistic problem solver. A high school internship with a Hollywood visual effects artist led David from an early interest in architecture, science, and all things technical, to a path toward the film industry.

From the beginning of his journey into filmmaking, David has had a passion for the creative workflow of post production. He left the lakes and mountains of New Hampshire to study film production at Emerson College in Boston. Here, he followed his interest in post as a manager of Emerson’s Digital Production Lab, and pursued his love for documentary filmmaking as the president of the school’s documentary club, Captured Emotion. David graduated from Emerson after producing his honors thesis documentary, Ravine, centered on a unique backcountry skiing community in rural New Hampshire.

David joins Breakwater as Head of Post-Production, overseeing all technical elements of picture editing, sound, color, visual effects and finishing - shaping a seamless delivery pipeline in the ever-accelerating world of post. As the last set of eyes and ears on any outgoing project, David ensures the highest technical integrity of all projects that pass through Breakwater Studios.

A native of artistically vibrant Santa Monica, Emily Bon developed her passions for film, literature, and vocal studies at a young age. Her further investment in the cultural studies of gender, ethnicity, and media led her to the prestigious Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. Emily holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communication, with a minor in Cinematic Arts from the USC School of Cinematic Arts. She graduated with honors in the Spring of 2012.

Emily’s previous positions at major agencies in the film and digital media industries led her to Breakwater Studios in early 2014, where she works daily with Ben Proudfoot as his Head of Development.

Clarisse Wiedem serves as the executive assistant to Ben Proudfoot an the office administrator for Breakwater Studios Ltd. The studio’s space runs on the reliability of Wiedem’s meticulous and enthusiastic attention to detail as she capably tackles and anticipates the needs of her coworkers and the company at large. Passionate about the hands on, multitasking nature independent filmmaking, on a typical day she can be founds serving a number of roles – from coordinating productions schedules on Breakwater’s latest project to providing a guiding hand to casting and reading actors.
In addition to her administrative duties such as facilitating all meetings, handling all calls, and working with company outreach, Wiedem also serves as one of the primary representatives of both the company and office space as a whole, providing a friendly, outgoing, and personable presence to both the internal team and visitors.
Breakwater Studios' one-woman hospitality team, Wiedem is a central figure to overall morale, cheering on her peers. Keen on eventually pursuing casting in independent film, Weidem is also a bit of cheese connoisseur and hopes to one day open a small cheese shop as a side endeavor. Wiedem is a graduate of USC and currently resides in Los Angeles.

Mary-Dan Johnston was born and raised in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the east coast of Canada. Always immersed in stories as a child, her love of narrative shaped the way she looks at the world. After spending her college years at St. Thomas University, a small liberal arts school in New Brunswick, Mary-Dan moved to the UK to pursue a Master's degree in Economic and Social History at the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. After finishing her postgraduate work, Mary-Dan has been putting her credentials to use in progressive policy research and advocacy in Halifax, while continuing her historical research and literary non-fiction work.

Joining Breakwater Studios in 2016 as Head of Research, Mary-Dan dives deep into the archives to color, calibrate and inform the often historical stories told by Breakwater Studios.

Nicholas Jacobson-Larson is a Los Angeles-based composer, conductor, and orchestrator who has written music for feature films, television, theater and the concert hall.

In 2014, Nicholas composed the score for the feature documentary Rwanda & Juliet, recorded at Warner Bros. Eastwood Stage. He also provided concert orchestrations for composer Michael Giacchino's Star Trek Into Darkness: Live In Concert, which premiered at Royal Albert Hall, as well as score preparation for the feature film Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. In 2013, Nicholas wrote the score for the award-winning documentary Matt Shepard is a Friend of Mine, and in 2012 was selected to participate in the ASCAP Film/TV Scoring Workshop with Richard Bellis, winning the Michelle and Dean Kay Award from The ASCAP Foundation.

Nicholas remains active writing music for the concert hall, having recently completed two commissions for the Naples Philharmonic: “Fantasia for Four Harps and Orchestra” (a quadruple harp concerto), and “The Snow Queen” (an educational piece for children, with narration by Dalton Leeb).

As a conductor, Nicholas has led several concerts, revues, recording sessions, and theatrical productions, including the musicals The Light in the Piazza, Les Miserables, and West Side Story. He was recently named Principal Conductor of the Contemporary Performance Collective.

Richard Graham is the President & COO of Breakwater, responsible for finance, operations, and business development. Mr. Graham joins Breakwater from a background in financial services, previously as an investor at Crescent Capital Group, L.P. and as a member of the investment banking department at Morgan Stanley. Mr. Graham received his BS in Business Administration summa cum laude from the University of Southern California.

Brooke Granowski is a bookmaker and designer living and working in Los Angeles, California.
She earned her BA in Studio Art and Religion at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. She interned for Krause Intaglio in Gardena, California, bound an edition of artist books for Prof. Fred Hagstrom, and worked as a wallpaper designer at Cavern Home before joining Breakwater.

A native of Marin County, California, Sean Higgins grew up in the video village on Industrial Light & Magic sets watching his Dad, an on-set video assist. Since his childhood, Sean has been passionate about sound production in its many venues, and particularly its application in cinema. He began to apprentice with industry professionals while still in high school. After being accepted to USC, Sean served as the audio director of Bovard Auditorium and all campus performance venues, worked as a teaching assistant in numerous sound production classes, and mixed over 100 student short films. Since graduating, Sean has worked on over 50 short films and a number of features as either supervisor, mixer, or production sound recordist.

Particularly interested in post-production and documentary location recording, Sean excels in collaborative environments where he can help create a soundtrack integral to the story. He has worked with Ben Proudfoot since before the formation of Breakwater Studios, most notably on Ben’s 2011 short, Dinner With Fred, where Sean supervised all sound, from pre-production to mixing the final film on a Warner Bros. stage.

Sean holds a B.A. degree in film production from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts with a minor in music recording from the Thornton School of Music, and currently freelances as a sound re-recording mixer for motion pictures and television.

Stephen Derluguian was born in Krasnodar in the former Soviet Union to professor parents. When he was just a toddler, his family moved to Chicago. Stephen grew up watching classics of international and Soviet Cinema on VHS, gifts his father brought back from his travels.

In 2012, Stephen graduated Magna Cum Laude from the USC School of Cinematic Arts where he met director Ben Proudfoot. He began working on an international production for Breakwater Studios shortly after graduating.

Today Stephen’s passion has become his work, and everyday he strives to bring vital, thoughtful and artistic films to the screen as Director of Special Projects for Breakwater Studios.

Mr. Quennell was born in Guelph, Ontario and graduated from Dalhousie University (formerly the Technical University of Nova Scotia) with a Masters Degree in Architecture in 1990. In a previous life he graduated from Lakehead University with a degree in Forestry in 1980. His dream dinner companions would be designer Jack Fisk, guitarist Keith Richards, actor Jeff Bridges and writer Miriam Toews. He has worked as a designer in the film and television industry for eighteen years, collaborating with such production design talents as Oscar-nominated David Gropman (The Shipping News) and Emmy-nominated Ian Thomas (Reversible Errors) as well as noted directors Kathryn Bigelow, Lasse Hallstrom and David Gordon Green.

Terry has taught production design courses at NSCAD University in Halifax as well as design intensive courses with the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative. He has traveled extensively through all of the major continents (sorry Antarctica) and lives in Timberlea, Nova Scotia with his dog, Hannah, where he continues to do battle with the unpredictable maritime summer and its affects on his vegetable garden.

Mr. Quennell joins Breakwater Studios as its Designer-in-Chief, overseeing all conceptual art, storyboards, production design and graphic design for Breakwater Studios' sundry projects.