Director Story

ANDREW SHANKS is a South Australian award-winning filmmaker with a wide skill set and over 10 years experience working as a director, producer, writer and editor. He has an extensive CV that includes short films, web series, online content, music videos, corporates, TVCs and reality television.

He is the co-founder and co-director of the production company and YouTube channel ‘Fury Fingers Films’, which has amassed over 10 millions views online for their unique brand of video game inspired action comedy. Their 4 part web series ‘Goons Inc’ won the 2018 Best Web Series SASA award and has been selected to Melbourne, Berlin, Seoul and Rio Web Fests, among many other festivals.

Separate to his work with Fury Fingers, in 2015 Andrew directed the short film ‘Doomsdays’ for the MRC’s Raw Nerve initiative, which went on to win the 2015 Best Comedy SASA award and was screened on ABC2. In 2016, Andrew completed post-graduate studies in Directing at the Australian Film Television & Radio School (AFTRS) in Sydney. In 2017, he produced, directed and edited the short film ‘Split Me’ which had its world premiere at Flickerfest and went on to screen at over a dozen film festivals around the world including Palm Springs ShortFest.

In 2019, Andrew co-created, wrote and directed the 6 episode action adventure rom-com web series ‘Love, Guns & Level Ups’, which was the recipient of SKIP AHEAD funding through SCREEN AUSTRALIA and GOOGLE AUSTRALIA. The series is currently in post-production and aiming for a late 2020 release online.

Andrew currently divides his time between Adelaide and Sydney, working as an editor on television shows such as Masterchef Australia, Australian Survivor and Lego Masters, while continuing to develop his slate of film and television projects. He strives to continue to evolve as a filmmaker, and build towards feature length projects and television series.

NICHOLAS CLEARY slid out of MAPS film school and rushed headfirst into the exciting world of corporate video. He quickly found his calling recording workplace training videos and animating spreadsheets. “It was simply the best,” state’s Nick as he looks back. “I miss it everyday.”

But for the sake of writing a diverse Bio about himself Nick chose to challenge himself and poured his inhibited filmmaking passion into a YouTube Channel about Video Game skits and parodies. Stories of action, comedy and with a heavy focus on VFX. Through “Fury Fingers” Nick has led various projects and collaborations that have unified the channel alongside brands such as Tomb Raider, Tom Clancy, Aussie comedian’s “Tripod,” the Metal Gear Solid franchise and a technical credit that means he can legally say his work features the voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

When Nick wasn’t dragging his feet on Fury Finger’s projects and collecting awards for their first web-series “Goons Inc” he also lucked into directing ‘Bigger Man’ for Raw Nerve in 2014. He has directed several TVCs and managed to sneak his first feature film onto NITV. Despite Nick’s irish heritage and predisposition for sunburn he has co-written and directed several short films and a feature with a strong focus on Aboriginality.

Nick also exercises his love for colour and visual storytelling through self published comic books about a crime fighting budgerigar. Women find him moderately attractive and he recently made “mad designs” for a massive pizza-oven. As a writer Nicks tries to exercise modesty and maintain professionalism. He also fucking hates cats.