Background
Anthony Scott Burns was born in Kitchener, Ontario in 1977.
Anthony Scott Burns was born in Kitchener, Ontario in 1977.
After starting his film career as a visual effects artist and director, as of 2015 he is directing three feature films in pre-production: Dark Matter, Holidays, and Plan B Entertainment"s Alpha. He also releases music under the moniker Pilotpriest. He was interested in film at a young age, and began building small models he dubbed "parallel universes".
He began working on films at the age of 16, and by 18 was making films, with several of his shorts winning local awards.
He is a self-taught director, cinematographer, and animator. At 18, he moved to Toronto where he landed a job at a boutique design firm and later was hired by Music Television Canada as Senior Designer.
Later on, Burns started directing commercials and performing VFX on multiple shoots. While with Music Television, he oversaw the creation and direction of all Music Television"s on-air interstitials in Canada.
In May 2011, after viewing some of the work Burns had created over the years, Helios Productions announced it had hired Burns to direct a thriller/sci-fi feature entitled Dark Matter, written by Hugh Sterbakov.
Filming began in November 2011 in Canada. As of 2012, Burns was based in Toronto. In 2012, he was the visual effects supervisor for The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh, and that September he released the trailer for Epoch, a short film constructed from footage for a music video.
In November 2014, he was brought in to direct the sci-fi thriller "Alpha, which is being produced by Brad Pitt and Plan B Entertainment.
In February 2015, XYZ Films hired him, as one of the directors, who will direct the anthology film Holidays, along with directors such as Scott Stewart, Nicholas McCarthy, Kevin Smith.