Vincent Powell is a film & tv director and producer based in Houston, TX where he and his wife Ebony run their production company 7972 Films and their non-profit Spark Arts Initiative. Vincent has built a solid career and reputation through hard work, an eagerness to learn and experiment, and the sheer joy of creating art that moves audiences through the compelling power of story.
For over 15 years Vincent has directed, produced, and developed a number of music videos, television ads, and web campaigns for artists and clients such as Disney, Gillette, Goldman-Sachs, the NFL, Prairie View A&M University, Spectrum, BET, Issa Rae, Trey Songz, Comcast, SXSW, Wiz Khalifa, T.I., Kirk Franklin, KevOnStage, PJ Morton, and Tobe Nwigwe. The online content Vincent has created has generated over 5M Youtube views and tens of millions of impressions online.
While those are more forward-facing pieces, Vincent mostly delights in creating narrative features, shorts, and episodic projects. Every February and June, he and his team rally together to create Black Is Eternal is an anthology performance series where actors and artists are captured performing known and unknown literary and musical works of Black authors. These episodes are released every day of February through the first week of March the content is shared on social media and in classrooms with paired lesson plans.
Often, he's encouraged by the story behind his short film Someone Like You (2016) where he launched a $2,000 crowd-funding campaign to film it. That goal was met in less than 24 hours. Two weeks later, the #SLY16 campaign reached a stunning $15,000 from 180 supporters. Someone Like You premiered as a Film of Note at the National Black Film Festival.
This process gave Vincent the confidence he needed to continue to grow and contribute as a voice in the independent film space. In 2019, he directed his first feature "The Freshman Year," (in post-production) a story about an all-star high school basketball player who loses his full rides ever D1 school and must start his freshman year of college at his mom's alma mater, Pride Valley University, an HBCU that tests him at his core.
Vincent holds an MFA in Film & Television Production from the lauded University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts and a BA in Radio, Television, and Film from Texas Southern University’s School of Communication. While writing and directing student films during undergrad, he also traveled the nation and globe as an international champion on the world-renowned TSU Debate Team. During his time in grad school at SCA, his artistic and academic achievements were recognized with an invitation to become a USC Annenberg Graduate Fellow--- one of the university's highest honors, reserved for those who exemplify “potential for significant contributions in the field of communications.”
In the same way that every note on the piano has been played, yet new songs move people every day, Vincent believes the very same is true with story. While stories of love, fear, grace, treason, abduction, and forgiveness have been told throughout time, depending on who's telling it and how it unfolds, these old familiar beats still can be made to feel new. That's Vincent Powell's goal as a storyteller.
Vincent and Ebony live in their hometown of Houston with their sons Michael Logan (3) and Peyton Maxwell (1) where he proudly serves as an adjunct professor at his alma mater, Texas Southern University's School of Communication.