John Tarnoff
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John Tarnoff is an executive at DreamWorks Animation where he is Head of PODs, the studio’s “incubator” department - a workshop responsible for developing the initial artistic designs and storyboards for the Company’s feature animated films.
John has been in the motion picture business for 30 years, starting in commercial production in New York, independent film distribution in Los Angeles, as a literary agent responsible for breaking talented film directors like John Landis, Michael Mann and Martha Coolidge, as a studio executive for MGM, Orion, Columbia and DeLaurentiis, as an independent film producer and as a technology entrepreneur.
Some of the films he has been responsible for include Diner, The Year of Living Dangerously, Pink Floyd The Wall, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and The Power of One. A co-founder of Village Roadshow Pictures, he pioneered U.S./Australian co-productions in the late 1980s.
He began using computers in film production in 1984, evolving into multimedia development in 1993 (BIG BROTHER based on Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and WarGames, based on the hit movie).
Prior to joining Dreamworks, John was the co-founder of Talkie, Inc a technology company that pioneered online conversational animated characters for marketing, brand building, lead generation, customer service and training.
John holds a B.A. from Amherst College, grew up in New York and Paris, and is a passionate still photographer.
