Avril furness CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Hello !  

I have been incredibly fortunate to work with some of the most talented people in the advertising and creative / immersive film industries over the last 15 years.

My passion for advertising was inspired by working with Lord Maurice Saatchi at M&C Saatchi as his assistant when I first started out before becoming an account exec and then transitioning into Creative; writing and art directing TV/cinema spots and campaigns for Coca-Cola, Nike, Cadbury, Orange, Tesco, Skoda and other brands at London advertising agencies Fallon and Wieden+Kennedy.

After taking a filmmaking post-graduate diploma at a London film school, my debut interactive 360 VR film I wrote and directed - The Last Moments - was presented at The Metropolitan Museum, New York at their ‘In Our Time Symposium’, as part of their ‘Most exciting and critical spatial projects of 2017’ and at THE WIRED LIVE Event, London, 2017. The film was nominated for ‘Best Director Award’ at Underwire Festival and ‘Most Immersive Award’ at Encounters Festival 2017.

I have since written and directed several interactive VR films over the years.  The Interactive VR film The Right Choice I directed for The International Committee of the Red Cross in partnership with Google won a Lovie Award, and an 8th annual Social Impact Media Award at SIMA 2020 for VR +360 Category and nominated for the Most Social Impact award at The VR Awards in London 2019. It has been shown at The World Economic Forum in Davos and film festivals internationally.

During the pandemic in 2020 - 2021 my production company was awarded multiple seed funding opportunities through government funded agency Story Futures, first working on a trauma informed immersive VR entertainment/film prototype to help young people transition out of the care system, and a second project Writing/Directing a Virtual Reality film prototype with BBC and BFI film archive and Story futures for Unboxed festival, UK 2022.

I went on to work as Creative Director at ad agency McCann Health London, leading pitches, overseeing creative campaign productions from brief to delivery, working with creative and production teams on delivering global advertising campaigns.

Currently I am working as Creative Lead at Iris Worldwide.