Ariel Vida is a Los Angeles-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.
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 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, Jared Moshe’s Aporia, Scott Derrickson's chapter of V/H/S/85, and Moorhead & Benson’s Sundance premiere Something in the Dirt - which Ariel also second unit directed.
Ariel’s feature directorial release Vide Noir, written and scored by Lord Huron, premiered in 2022 through 1091 Pictures. Her first published short fiction was printed in the 2023 genre anthology HAUNTED REELS alongside fellow filmmakers C. Robert Cargill, Gigi Saul Guerrero, Brea Grant, Owen Egerton, Gary Sherman, and more. Her second feature as director - Trim Season, starring Bethlehem Million, Jane Badler, Alex Essoe and Bex Taylor-Klaus - will release in select theaters and VOD June 2024.
Ariel is represented by XYZ Films and is an IATSE Local 800 member of the Art Directors Guild.
