ABOUT PILOTPRIEST (ANTHONY SCOTT BURNS)
Pilotpriest is the music-making moniker of writer, director, cinematographer, editor, VFX and composer Anthony Scott Burns. Under this pseudonym, he has released a number of critically successful albums and EPs, including the cult vinyl hit Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, which was released on the celebrated soundtrack label Waxwork Records. He has just completed another upcoming soundtrack for the feature film The Education of Fred Fitzell starring Dylan O’Brien (The Maze Runner) and Maika Monroe (It Follows).
A filmmaker from the new school, Burns is an autodidactic artist that derives inspiration from the simplest motivation: to create art on his own terms. He shoots, edits, scores, writes, designs, and completes the brunt of the post-work on his projects. Born in Kitchener, Ontario, and based in Toronto, Burns has been drawn to filmmaking since a young age. He started his professional career in graphic design and was a Senior Designer at MTV Canada and worked in the commercial sector before focusing on his original films.
He first made his name known with the self-release of the viral fan short film Tron: Destiny in 2011 and followed it up with the short Manifold, which went on to world premiere at the 2013 Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. The “tech-noir narrative” starred iconic character actor Stephen McHattie and was widely celebrated on the circuit and on release. The attention garnered from his shorts brought Burns into the mix for a number of A-list projects and led to him being called “the next big thing” by The Hollywood Reporter. In 2014 he directed an episode of Vincenzo Natali’s show Darknet and in 2016 contributed to Kevin Smith’s horror anthology Holidays with the acclaimed segment “Father’s Day.” Burns’ feature debut Our House world premiered at the 2018 Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal was released later that year by IFC Midnight.
In 2020 Burns’ sophomore feature, Come True, starring Julia Sarah Stone (Honey Bee) and Landon Liboiron (Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare), was selected to world premiere at the digital edition of Fantasia and is now available in theaters and on demand courtesy of IFC Films.
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