“There are some things that were meant to be. Some movies which you have to see. I wanted to be a part of a movie like that. I wanted to work with people making a movie about living a life that was meant to be.”
Sebastian brings 25 years of experience in film and TV to Eyes Open and is the founding partner of Savant Artists which advises and represents emerging filmmakers and content creators. Clients have produced films that premiered at all of the major film festivals including Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca, Telluride, and Toronto, which were released by most of the leading distributors theatrically and in all media. He is also the host of The Insiders which is a web series about the business of Hollywood.
Sebastian started in the business as an agent’s assistant in the motion picture department at ICM. He graduated from the USC School of Cinematic Arts in 1993. His short film, Silent Rain, received a Student Academy Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as well as the Student Emmy. He taught at USC School of Cinematic Arts for ten years.
Sebastian’s first production job was from 1995-1999 for Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner’s Paramount-based company where he started as an assistant and was promoted to executive, actively participating in the making of Mission: Impossible I-II and Without Limits. Sebastian was the head of development for a Paramount-based production company called Craftsman Films, founded by Kerry McCluggage, which developed numerous studio projects, including the initial development for the feature film reinvention of the Star Trek franchise.
For three years, he worked in comedy and drama development at Touchstone Television, the tv production division of the Walt Disney Company and ABC, where he staffed on six produced pilots. He also worked on numerous pilots and on-air tv series for Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment.