Kelly Mason

Member of: ICG 669. IFC, WIF, CSC (associate member since 1991) Canadian citizen, US resident, Costa Rica resident, Trinidad & Tobago citizen. Kelly was born in Canada and raised in an Arab home in Trinidad, West Indies. Kelly began her love affair with images at the young age of 8, when she received her first Kodak camera for Christmas. From that moment she became the family documentarian, which later evolved into her power tool to create purposeful films that have helped parents find peace and toddlers find joy through her award-winning children's films. Kelly also used her power of filmmaking to encourage environmental legislation in Central America, which creates a closed-loop solution for plastic waste. (pavetheroad.net). Richard J. Lewis (EP/ Director of Westworld) came on the project as her EP and in 2021/2022 the project has earned 22 laurels, 8 for best cinematography. The film can be seen worldwide in nearly every language around the world on Facebook Meta Oculus, Dreamscape, and multiple international broadcasters. Distribution inquiries can be made through Espresso Media International. Other documentaries Kelly DP'd include, Code Pink (with founders, Jodie Evans and Madea Benjamin with activist Maya Angelou), and Acalen, with Ali McGraw. At 12 years old, Kelly drew plans for a full-size "professional" darkroom, and began her 30-year career as a fine art photographer printing silver gelatin black and whites and selling to her film friends, in galleries and museums worldwide. Her top earning print, Apparition, was sold for $10.000 to a private collector in Los Angeles. The series, shot in Syria, will be available as an NFT collection in 2022/23. At 16 years old Kelly got her lucky break into the film industry on a 55 million dollar budget film, Cannonball Run III (Speedzone) where she was appointed "Camera Trainee", a not yet established position in the union film industry, and assisted a 7 camera unit. By creating the camera trainee position within the IATSE 667 union, she continued her extensive career on Alliance's "ENG" with EP Robert Lantos. Ever since then Kelly has worked with and learned from the best in the field, including the late Vilmos Zsigmond ASC, Lazlo Kovacs ASC, Dante Spinatte ASC, and Bill Bennett ASC, (to name a few) by operating cameras for them on main unit projects. When film and digital emerged, Kelly deepened her experience and knowledge of the negative and DI by working as a Supervising Director of Photography, in between film projects, for Los Angeles based, Superdailies, where she oversaw the color timing for Sam Mendes, Stephen Poster ASC, Nancy Schreiber, ASC and other great masters of cinema. Prior to becoming a full time Director of Photography, she operated "A" camera on over 60 projects. She has shot for great producers including Academy award winning duo James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, as well as "giant" producers such as Sarah Schecter, Greg Berlanti, and J. Miles Dale. Kelly has served as 2nd unit / stunt unit DP for showrunners/producers Brad Wright, Dean White and for EPs Shawn Ryan & Seth Gordon on the Sony Netflix Series, "The Night Agent". Kelly is a strong leader and inspiring speaker and teacher. In between projects she commits to inspiring high school and university students by providing workshops with industry professionals to teach young adults how to harness the power of filmmaking to make the world a better place. Kelly is a member of the International Cinematographer Guild (669), the Canadian Society of Cinematographers, Women in Film and the IFP. She is on staff at Getty Images as a Producer/ Director / Motion Picture Cinematographer and was on staff at Superdailies; a company that caters to Cinematographers by Cinematographers, in the telecine session, as a Supervising Cinematographer. She has been an instructor for the Camera Assistants courses at both the Canadian Society of Cinematographers and the British Columbia Institute of Technology. She was elected to the Executive Board of local 669 in both 1995 and 1996 where she served as the Union Secretary. She played an instrumental role in developing a Film Commission in Trinidad, West Indies.