About the FILMMAKER

Lord of the Wiens: A Dachumentary was directed and produced by Elise Ballard. She started her career in entertainment training and working as an actor in New York City and then moved back home to Texas to Austin (home of her alma mater) for a brief bit. She moved to Los Angeles for several years and then found herself back in the Austin area again which is where she made L.O.W. and resides currently. In Los Angeles, she was a partner in the production company Trubedour Entertainment which produced the feature films, Blind Heat, distributed by Monarch Entertainment, and Lions Gate Entertainment’s Serial Killing 101, a coming-of-age dark comedy starring Thomas Haden-Church and Lisa Loeb.

The management and distribution of Lord of the Wiens is handled by Ballard’s production company, Temerity Entertainment. Since 2005, Elise’s credits have included director/producer of a promotional piece on the alternative healing method, Resonance (Holographic) Repatterning; creator and director of the BackStage: Behind the Scenes segments for Time Warner cable’s Publik Music channel; executive producer and creative consultant of NYC celebrity trainer Joel Harper’s FitPack, a series of short exercise regimens (which also included creating/acting in a series of comedic viral ads); and working in production on Terrence Malik’s latest film, The New World. Temerity has several projects in development, including an educational children’s video and book series and another verite (ie: basically unplanned and "on the fly" like Wiens) documentary about her experience when she sublet one summer which is also being developed into a narrative feature film script.

Ballard is still a professional actor when she’s available and serves on the Board of the non-profit media organization Reel Women in Austin. She also has been a preliminary judge for the last 4 years for the prestigious Humanitas Prize in Los Angeles. If you’d like to contact her directly, info@lordofthewiens.com.