Los Angeles, California, United States
Kyle Sykes is an award winning African American director currently working in Los Angeles. Born in Boston, he moved to California to study at Stanford University, and recently completed his MFA at USC ’s School of Cinematic Arts. After having spent his early years interning at HBO, he began shooting and editing projects for commercial clients in the bay area: Airbnb, Afrotech, Hypebeast, Levis, Red Bay Coffee, Rolling Stone, Pinterest, etc. As a fellow of the 2022 Deutsche Bank Frieze Los Angeles Film Award, he was highlighted online and in the Frieze Art Fair and magazine as one of ten distinguished minority film makers telling diverse stories in Los Angeles. The short film he made last year with this fellowship, Nomadic, was screened on a panel at the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival. It was also official selection at the Micheaux Film Festival and the Toronto Short Film Festival. For the 2022 fall season, he was the Director of Photography for The Hollywood Reporter’s roundtable series on actors, actresses, directors, and producers. The year prior, he did a sports documentary about basketball and gentrification in Portland, Jumptown, which is currently being distributed on Roku. This past year, he was one of eight international documentary scholars in Beijing, China. He has recently begun structuring and managing a film fund for Kino Studios. On the tech side, Kyle has been an early hire at multiple venture backed startups, including the first hire at unicorn Scale API. He has served in marketing and community manager roles at everywhere from crypto exchanges to Airbnb— and is passionate about fusing the worlds of film, tech, and investing. Past Clients: Levis, Airbnb, Pinterest, Hypebeast, AKQA, Wish, Culture Co-Op, Illy Specialties: Creative Direction, Branding, Content Creation, Film making, Final Cut Pro, Photography, Video, Canon, Nikon, Creative Writing, Screen Writing, Photoshop, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, Presentation Skills, Copy Writing, Seminars, Spanish Fluency
We’re a fund focused on the transformation of sports, media, and entertainment, together with my partner we are leveraging a combined 20 years of experience across Wall Street, tech, M&A and entertainment experience. JacksonSykes is launching a seed fund in California to back U.S. sports, media, and entertainment infrastructure startups leveraging operator experience from Scale AI’s early team, advantaged sourcing via LaFamilia and BLCK VC, and deep Wall Street and studio deal expertise across Warner Bros., Fox, and Disney.
As Creative Director, I work on marketing campaigns and visual commercials to present HODL's products and offerings. I also work closely with Investors and Investor Relations to source capital and develop our offerings.
I was the Director of Photography for The Hollywood Reporter on their round tables series: Directors, Actors, Actresses, Producers, and Writers. This allowed me to work with and photograph celebrities such as Adam Sandler, Viola Davis, Alejandro González Iñárritu. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/vcategory/roundtables-4462/
Worked directly with high net worth portfolio clients and CEOs Developed holistic strategy for portfolio management Adapted CEO’s retirement strategy book in personal client films