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Film is a complicated business, so the word “filmmaker” makes a great umbrella term for all kinds of directors, producers, and creatives at work in major studios and indie projects worldwide. Chris Chunk is bridging a gap to become a new kind of filmmaker. Her vast experience in music informs her work as a director, and it’s been a winning combination.
Chris Chunk has been in the film world for a long time, though most of her experience has been on the music side. She’s worked as the composer for over two dozen projects and was the music director representing New Zealand at the Shanghai World Expo. In 2015, she was nominated for Best Original Song at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival. Then, in 2016, Chris started to receive a different kind of attention as the director of “Sins of Identity,” which was featured at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2018, she received a nomination for Best Director for her “Mel Tells” web series at the Los Angeles Web Fest.
A leap of faith took place between the music nominations and the directing nominations. Chris had been a confident composer and music teacher, and she had some experience in post-production. Still, she found herself leaping into directing with little experience in that side of things. By the time her film was showing at the Cannes Film Festival, however, she had no regrets. To her, succeeding as a director was all about adapting what she’d learned in her music career, and it gave her a unique perspective on the work.
When it comes to succeeding in film, having that unique view of things is essential. Skill and talent combine with vision, and that vision should be personal and impossible to imitate. Chris’s background makes her move into filmmaking a special event. Besides the perspective that comes from her mixed Taiwanese and New Zealand background, Chris’s music background also makes her a new force in directing that comes with ten years of LA experience and a style that stands out on the screen. This incomparably rare combination of qualities has already had startling results in her young career.
Chris has been working on both sides of filmmaking in the past decade, and it’s become her dream to produce musical films that can move the hearts of her audience. Love of film, whether composing or directing, is her constant motivation. She has a long road ahead of her, with a lot of untapped potential to be explored as her career goes on. What direction that career takes is impossible to predict so early, but few young filmmakers have had such a diverse spread of nominations, so she’s sure to succeed in whichever direction she chooses.
The future of filmmaker Chris Chunk may be a rare two-fold career, a multifaceted success story that can only happen in the unique environment of LA film studios. Her career has already been a special one, however. Whatever potential the future has for her, the first act of an extraordinary LA success story has already begun.
