Ariel Vida is an LA-based director and production designer from the small town of Twin Lake, Michigan. A writer/director of the surreal and fantastical, she has also designed over a hundred short films, music videos, commercials, and feature films. Most at home shooting strange desert vistas and stylized action, Ariel is drawn to telling both sprawling, Tolkien-esque tales as well as wild adventures told in the breadth of a single song.
Her music video directorial debut - Lord Huron's The World Ender - was selected as a Vimeo Staff Pick and awarded Best Music Video at the 2016 Orlando Film Festival. Her design work has received high honors, including ‘Best Production Design' at NIFFF 2017 for Moorhead & Benson’s The Endless. The music videos for Lord Huron’s The Night We Met, which Ariel produced, and Childish Gambino’s Sober, which she art directed, have both been viewed over 100 million times on YouTube.
Three feature films Ariel production designed were released in 2020 - Amy Seimetz’s NEON release She Dies Tomorrow, Adam Egypt Mortimer’s Archenemy, and Moorhead & Benson’s Synchronic. Most recently, she designed Alma Har’el’s Shadow Kingdom for Bob Dylan, Moorhead & Benson’s Sundance 2022 premiere Something in the Dirt, as well asScott Derrickson's upcoming segment of V/H/S/85.
Ariel’s feature directorial debut Vide Noir will be released in November 2022 through 1091 Pictures. She just completed directing her second feature, Trim Season, starring Bethlehem Million, Alex Essoe, Jane Badler, and Bex Taylor-Klaus.
