BACKGROUND

Producer and director Kevin Pruitt has made a career of pairing his love of film with an innate talent for connecting with an audience. Pruitt began his career as a self-taught adolescent auteur, making his first shorts on video in the 5th grade on a neighbor’s video camera. By high school, he had graduated to the medium of Super 8 and was set on a career in film.

A native of Mineral Wells, Texas, Pruitt was “discovered” by a Columbia Pictures exec when he was still completing his degree at the University of Texas Austin’s film school.  Invited to showcase his work at the Directors Guild of America in Los Angeles, he ultimately won a job at Columbia Tristar promoting and marketing home videos for films such as “Starship Troopers,” “Jerry Maguire,” “Men in Black” and “The People vs. Larry Flynt.”

Spending four years flying back and forth from Los Angeles to Texas ultimately took its toll, and Pruitt decided to return to the now-burgeoning town of Austin to focus on his first love of directing.

After helming music videos for Mercury Records, he founded Strike Productions in 1999 and spent the next eight years creating documentaries, corporate and legal videos, children’s video and commercials.  He found his ability to wear many hats made his job both more time and cost efficient, and he took on every role in the business, from client relations to working with media buyers for commercial feedback.

“I like to be able to oversee the project from selecting the client to guiding them to messaging;” he explains. “All the things that can be convoluted if you get more people involved. My services don’t really stop at the final edit; I continue to be hired on to make sure the project works well with its audience.”

Ultimately, producing live events such as the premiere of “The Alamo” (an experience he says is like “Broadway… you have one night and that’s it.”) rounded out his repertoire.

Through his years of experience, Pruitt has built a relationship with his clients on a personal level that transcends a specific medium. Singled out for his distinctive interviewing style by luminaries such as Willie Nelson, Secretary of State James A. Baker III, Senator Rodney Ellis and Coach Darrell Royal, he is able to set his clients at ease from the very beginning of a project.

No matter what he’s working on, he says, “People find they can hire me, set me loose to do the work and have the confidence that it’s going to turn out great.”