May 2018 – Finley Wise

ABOUT

Finley Wise is an irrepressible Executive Producer, 1st AD and Head of Production with 15+ years of creative filmmaking experience. There's nothing Finley can't produce, and no production curveball he hasn't faced with gusto. Finley once survived a bad bout of food poisoning while filming in Bogotá, and rushed an injured Latin American celebrity to the hospital during F1 weekend in Mexico City. He's had 30 minutes to shoot 2 hours’ worth of material with The Rock, and rotoscoped armpit sweat at the behest of an actor’s livid Mom-ager.

Gnarled production challenges have been a given on just about every shoot Finley's ever run. But counter to what one might think, those challenges reinforce in him a solutions-oriented approach that is core to his ethos as a producer: planning meticulously; salvaging creative discoveries from the snags; and operating out of joy and equanimity. Because there’s always an answer. There’s always a positive move to be made. And honoring the labor of cast and crew shines back in the material itself, in the images we see on screen. Positive problem-solving is the core of a well-told story, and of Finley's artistic approach.

About Finley: he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from UC Berkeley, with a year spent abroad at the graduate school of The Universitat de Barcelona and a double major in Spanish & Legal Studies. After a brief stint crunching numbers in San Francisco's financial sector, Finley began producing full-time, enchanted by the collaborative spirit of filmmaking. Finley's earliest productions were low budget music videos for the likes of UMG, Capitol Records, and EMI. His music video work quickly expanded into the short-form commercial and narrative realms and, over the past decade+, he's produced an array of international film content, helming productions everywhere from the remote tundras of Southern Alaska to the vast jungles of Coastal Brazil and the giant urban landscapes of Singapore, Moscow, Tokyo and London. From Meta's Connect Keynote to YouTube’s epic Rewind series and integrated campaigns for Lenovo, Legendary, Microsoft, and Google, Finley's led his casts, clients and crews through rainstorms and heatwaves, Russian winters and Japanese summers, always centering his work around good creative, well-supported talent (both on-screen and off!), safe sets and collaborative partnerships.

In addition to speaking fluent Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, Finley enjoys conversing in all things fútbol (¡Visca al Barça!), beach runs with his supersonic whippet, Lola, good books, time well spent with family, and 100% natural peanut butter. Finley is currently contracting with Netflix's Creative Labs Production team.