Thomas CruickshankSearch WILDsound  Thomas Cruickshank was born 14th August 1982 in Tromsø, Norway.At the age of eight he started making short stop-motion action films starring G.I Joe’s and Marvel comic figures set in Lego environments with his dads video-8 camera. Years later Thomas graduated from high school and joined the army where he served in the infantry for one year before moving on to trying his luck on higher studies. After a lot of back and forth, dropping out and doing odd jobs over the whole of Scandinavia, he finally found back to his niche in life at Danvik international media school in Drammen, where he did the documentary & Journalism course. From there on out he was for a while involved in both local TV as a cameraman and in the theatre as an actor and an extra. Finding this kind of work to be somewhat lacking in integrity and excitement, he then travelled abroad to do a bachelor in TVand- screen-media at the Griffith film school, situated under the Queensland Collage of Art in Brisbane, Australia. Thomas has later become quite known as a highly popular instructor and a decent writer, and is often caught using examples from his own turbulent life combined with profound humanknowledge and a strong sense of self-irony when explaining something to his actors or peers. A big fan of method acting and does not shy away from using “foul” tricks when trying to gethis actors to perform. When asked what has been the reason for his success, Thomas states; “I was always a lonely child, not by chance, but by choice. Whenever I felt that the other kidsdidn’t want to play things my way, I went back inside or off somewhere else where I could craftthe play the way I saw it best. I used to spend countless hours drawing, building, organizingand playing out the back-story behind the action, making “the film” inside my own headcomplete down to the last detail. When the other kids then came and saw what I had done, theyalways wanted to join in. Of course, it was not always like that, but often enough. In later yearsmy greatest challenge has been to let “the other kids”, so to speak, in on the fun on a muchearlier stage, since film making can never be a one-mans-show. I feel I am getting better at itall the time, but it is still a challenge sometimes. Success, for me happens when I allow othersto make mistakes, as well as myself and then in a friendly and respectful manner both partscome to a joint solution to the problem. Nothing truly great can come from something that’salready “perfect”. That goes for pretty much everything in life, I find.”
Thomas Cruickshank
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CREATIVE IDEAS
