# Lance Acord

Lance Acord ASC is an American cinematographer and film director. He is best known for his work on the films, Buffalo '66 (1998), Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation (2002), and Lost in Translation (2003).

## Early life

Acord studied photography and filmmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute.

## Career
### Cinematographer

Acord began his career with photographer/filmmaker Bruce Weber, which whom he made documentaries, commercials and music videos. His breakthrough came after he shot the music video for Björk's "Big Time Sensuality", directed by Stéphane Sednaoui. Acord continued to work extensively in commercials and music videos through the 1990s. He earned the MTV Video Music Award for Best Cinematography for his work on the Fatboy Slim music video for "Weapon of Choice", which featured Christopher Walken and was directed by Spike Jonze. He also worked with R.E.M. on a regular basis.
Acord made his first foray into narrative feature filmmaking as the cinematographer of Vincent Gallo's Buffalo '66 (1998). He shot Spike Jonze's films Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation (2002), and Where the Wild Things Are (2009), Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation (2003), Marie Antoinette (2006), and her short film Lick the Star (1998), as well as Peter Care's The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002).

### Commercial director

In the late 1990s, Acord began to transition to commercial directing and in 1998, together with his business partner Jackie Kelman Bisbee, he founded the commercial production company Park Pictures. He received 35 Cannes Lions for his work with clients such as Nike, Apple, HP, Volkswagen, P&G, Subaru. He was nominated for Best Commercial Director by the DGA in 2003, 2011, 2012, and 2017. In 2011, his Super Bowl spot for Volkswagen, "The Force", was named the best ad of 2011 by AdWeek, Creativity, and YouTube and consistently ranks on lists of the greatest Super Bowl commercials of all time. His Apple film "Misunderstood" won the 2014 Emmy Award for Outstanding Commercial. In 2019, he won his second Emmy award for the Nike commercial "Dream Crazy," starring Colin Kaepernick.
In 2019, directed the short film commercial for Xfinity, A Holiday Reunion, based on the film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and starring Henry Thomas, who reprises his role as Elliott.

## Filmography
### Director of photography

Short film
| Year | Title | Director | Notes |
| 1992 | Billy Nayer | Cory McAbee | |
| 1995 | Gentle Giants | Bruce Weber | |
| 1997 | How They Get There | Spike Jonze | |
| 1998 | Amarillo by Morning | Spike Jonze | Documentary short |
| 1998 | Lick the Star | Sofia Coppola | |
| 2000 | Eventual Wife | Bryan Bantry Dave Diamond | |
| 2012 | Ed Ruscha, Woody and the World's Hottest Pepper | Himself | |
| 2013 | Apple Misunderstood | Himself | |
| 2019 | E.T.: A Holiday Reunion | Himself | TV special |
Feature film
| Year | Title | Director |
| 1998 | Buffalo '66 | Vincent Gallo |
| 1999 | Being John Malkovich | Spike Jonze |
| 2001 | Southlander | Steve Hanft |
| 2002 | The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys | Peter Care |
| 2002 | Adaptation | Spike Jonze |
| 2003 | Lost in Translation | Sofia Coppola |
| 2006 | Marie Antoinette | Sofia Coppola |
| 2009 | Where the Wild Things Are | Spike Jonze |
| 2014 | God's Pocket | John Slattery |
Documentary film
| Year | Title | Director | Notes |
| 1998 | Free Tibet | Sarah Pirozek | |
| 2001 | Chop Suey | Bruce Weber | With James D. Cooper and Jim Fealy |
| 2012 | Wild in the Streets | Peter Baxter | With Peter Baxter, Terrence Hayes, Laurent Malaquais and Mark Williams |
| 2018 | Nice Girls Don't Stay for Breakfast | Bruce Weber | |
Music videos
| Year | Artist | Title | Director | Notes |
| 1993 | The Smashing Pumpkins | "Cherub Rock" | Kevin Kerslake | |
| 1993 | Björk | "Big Time Sensuality" | Stéphane Sednaoui | |
| 1994 | Youssou N'Dour and Neneh Cherry | "7 Seconds" | Stéphane Sednaoui | |
| 1994 | MC Solaar | "Nouveau Western" | Stéphane Sednaoui | |
| 1994 | G. Love & Special Sauce | "Cold Beverage" | Mark Romanek | |
| 1994 | Sonic Youth | "Superstar" | Dave Markey | |
| 1995 | R.E.M. | "Crush with Eyeliner" | Spike Jonze | |
| 1995 | Ween | "Freedom of '76" | Spike Jonze | |
| 1995 | Waterlillies | "Never Get Enough" | Christina Wayne | |
| 1995 | Method Man featuring Mary J. Blige | "I'll Be There for You/You're All I Need to Get By" | Diane Martel | |
| 1995 | Method Man & Redman | "How High" | Diane Martel | |
| 1995 | Björk | "It's Oh So Quiet" | Spike Jonze | |
| 1995 | Elastica | "Car Song" | Spike Jonze | |
| 1997 | Daft Punk | "Da Funk" | Spike Jonze | |
| 1997 | Pond | "Spokes" | Mike Mills | |
| 1997 | The Chemical Brothers | "Elektrobank" | Spike Jonze | |
| 1997 | Björk | "Bachelorette" | Michel Gondry | |
| 1997 | The Notorious B.I.G. | "Sky's the Limit" | Spike Jonze | |
| 1998 | R.E.M. | "Lotus" | Stéphane Sednaoui | |
| 1998 | Fatboy Slim | "Praise You" | Spike Jonze | With Lance Bangs |
| 1999 | The Chemical Brothers | "Let Forever Be" | Michel Gondry | |
| 1999 | Tricky | "For Real" | Stéphane Sednaoui | |
| 2001 | Fatboy Slim | "Weapon of Choice" | Spike Jonze | |
| 2001 | Dave Matthews Band | "Everyday" | Chuck McBride | |
| 2003 | The White Stripes | "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself" | Sofia Coppola | |
| 2004 | Yeah Yeah Yeahs | "Y Control" | Spike Jonze | |
| 2005 | Björk | "Triumph of a Heart" | Spike Jonze | |

### Producer

* Robot & Frank (2012)
* God's Pocket (2014)
Executive producer
* The New Tenants (2009) (Short film)
* Cop Car (2015)
* Other People (2016)
* The Rehearsal (2016)
* The Hero (2017)
* An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn (2018)
* The Sentence (2018)
* Hearts Beat Loud (2018)
* Lazy Susan (2019) (Short film)
* Farewell Amor (2020)
* The Last Shift (2020)
* The Truffle Hunters (2020) (Documentary)
* The Heart Still Hums (2020) (Documentary short)
* Born to Play (2020) (Documentary)
* Another Hayride (2021) (Documentary short)
* Long Weekend (2021)
* There There (2022)
* Aisha (2022)
* Broadway Rising (2022) (Documentary)
* The Independent (2022)
* Earth Mama (2023)
* Late Bloomers (2023)
* Flipside (2023)