Paul Dudar
Assistant Director – VFX – Writer
I’m a Toronto-based film and television professional with over a decade of experience in assistant directing, visual effects, and storytelling. Whether coordinating productions, solving on-set challenges, or writing about film, I love helping great stories come to life.
Assistant Director
I started my career as an Assistant Director (AD) in 2013. I excel at managing relationships and communication flow among Producers, Directors, Cast, and Crew to ensure the smooth execution of the production. My experience as an AD has made me intimately familiar with the inner workings of a production, and I have extensive experience placing and directing background performers on several television shows, including Star Trek, Designated Survivor, Umbrella Academy and many others. From 2020 to 2021, I had the opportunity to work for Elliott Animation on Lucas the Spider as the 1st Assistant Director of their Live-Action Unit. Below are just a handful of shows I’ve had the chance to work on.
For a complete list of my work as an Assistant Director, check out my DGC page and my IMDb profile.
Visual Effects
Inspired by the work I was starting to do at Lucas the Spider for Elliott Animation, I joined KrowVFX as their VFX Coordinator. It was a terrific opportunity to learn a new field in show business. It has allowed me to work with the artists in the shop and hone my skills with clients. I also had opportunities to work on-set as a Data Wrangler and On-Set Supervisor. In 2023, I joined IATSE 667 as a VFX Coordinator and Data Wrangler. Below are just a few shows I’ve had a chance to work on.
Come back later…I’m cutting my reel together….
Writing
Storytelling is a great passion of mine – from scriptwriting to articles, I’m a sucker for a good story. I am interested in working on pieces that tell the everyday stories of people in an insightful and uplifting way. Recently, the article I wrote on my customer interactions as a bike courier during COVID-19 was featured in Toronto Life. My scriptwriting tends to lean toward comedies and dramas, with the odd sci-fi thrown into the mix. I have written a pilot called ‘Hard Cut’ which is ready to be rejected by both Agents and Producers. I was also a regular contributor to the Toronto Harold and TooFar.TV
In 2023, as SAG-AFTRA and the WGA went on strike, I founded Showbiz Hobo to share an insider’s perspective on the film and television industry. After spending more than a decade working in production and post-production, I wanted to combine my love of storytelling with thoughtful criticism, behind-the-scenes insights, and conversations about the effort of filmmaking. Showbiz Hobo is my way of celebrating the people who bring stories to life while offering audiences a deeper appreciation for how great film and television are made from the bottom up! I’ve hosted screenings with lectures that dive deep behind the scenes and occasionally get a weigh-in from people who worked on them. Below is a selection of just a few of my articles. Check out the website for more
Smokey and the Bandit (1977) Sumbeech made a movie!
Smokey and the Bandit came into being when legendary stuntman Hal Needham wanted to break into directing. He wrote Smokey and started pitching a script to studios as a low-budget B-movie starring Jerry Reed. Needham ran into roadblocks as he was known as a stuntman and not a writer/director. That’s the weird thing about Hollywood…to this day, a studio and producers would rather take a chance on a person who barely knows the roles and duties of a director than give a job to somebody established in another role….CLICK HERE TO KEEP READING
Slap Shot (1977): The Greatest Hockey Movie Ever Made, and the shoot that can’t happen again (legal said so)!
Slap Shot has it’s origins with a drunk dial.
It’s 1974. A minor league hockey player named Ned Dowd is playing for the Jonestown Jets in the Federal League. Ned had a great college career. He played D2 NCAA Hockey for Bowdoin College and scored 43 goals in 3 years. Now he’s on the Jonestown Jets, riding at the bottom of the standings. The mill in town is shutting down. The team is probably going to fold. So Ned and his teammates do what hockey players do in that situation: they go out and get absolutely hammered.
Somewhere in the early AM, Ned drunk-dials his big sister Nancy….CLICK HERE TO KEEP READING
For Your Eyes Only: Looking at Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) through the work of Laura Mulvey
In her essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Laura Mulvey offers a feminist critique of classical Hollywood Cinema. She asserts that male domination rules the gaze of classical Hollywood films and the female form within. According to Mulvey, the female form elicits the pleasurable gaze of the active male spectator. In her words, “pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly.”(Mulvey, 33)
To control the gaze is to control the woman being looked at, and ultimately, it is the goal of classical Hollywood film to maintain and promote male domination over women…CLICK HERE TO KEEP READING
Showbiz Hobo Salutes: Catherine O’Hara (1954-2026)
I’ve been very privileged in my career to work with some outstanding people. Some of them are well known, and most are not so well known. One of the most talented is Catherine O’Hara….Michael Shannon might come close, but Catherine edges him out with her range.
My first brush with Catherine came in and around 2012/2013, when I was the Production Secretary for Undercover Boss Canada. If you recall, in that show, you would have your CEO dress up and go “undercover” in their own companies. Most of the time we would have the CEO’s come to Toronto and spend an afternoon putting together a disguise. On one occasion, the CEO was tied up and couldn’t make the trip, so they sent me to Judi Cooper-Sealy. Judi was an Emmy-winning hairstylist. On Judy’s IMDb are movies like Chicago, Hairspray, 54 and Father of the Bride Pt II. Judi had made a name for herself building characters on SCTV. A lot of people would have thought that was a pain. For me, it was like “Hey Paul! Do you want to go play dress up with one of the greatest hair people that ever lived?” CLICK HERE TO KEEP READING
The Toronto Harold
The Toronto Harold is a satirical website that lampoons local, provincial, national and international news. Below are a few selections from my time there.
“The Douchebags Have Returned”: A Journey with David Suzuki Through King West
Toronto – Legendary TV Host and Environmental Activist, David Suzuki, has spent the last 4 months crouched behind a wilderness blind at King and Portland. This past Saturday, a ready-eyed Suzuki conferred with his colleagues before turning to this reporter to declare, “…the Douchebags have returned, nature is coming back to King West. It’s a beautiful sight.”
Suzuki has been attempting to raise awareness of environmental changes in wildlife that had been taking place on King West since the beginning of the Coronavirus lockdown.
“The early days of lockdown were devastating to the migratory and mating patterns of douchebags. Traditional mating practices, like driving their parent’s Lexus from the 905s so they can then creep back and forth along King Street, were interrupted,” explained Suzuki. CLICK HERE TO KEEP READING
Trump Campaign Appoints Sesame Street Gang To Re-Count Votes in Michigan
DETROIT – On Thursday morning, the Trump Campaign sent a team from the Public Broadcasting Corporation to handle the recount in Michigan.
“I have the best counters handling it. They know all the numbers. The big ones and the small ones, mostly the small ones, that sleepy Joe got,” announced Trump from the White House. “Great counters, I watch them every day.”
As dawn broke in Motor City USA, the team from Sesame Street descended upon polling stations alongside Trump Campaign lawyers.
“One! Two! Three! Counts of voter fraud,” claimed The Count, the Transylvanian-born Sesame counting expert, “We will get to the bottom of the unprecedented number of illegals voting, ha-ha-ha,” cackled The Count maniacally. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE
Homeland Security Accidentally Deploys 1500 NASA Employees To Act As Crowd Control In Portland
PORTLAND, OR – ICE and Border Patrol Agents who had been deployed to Portland to protect federal buildings were set to be rotated out this Tuesday with another Federal agency. The agents, who were prepared to be relieved of duty by members of the National Guard, were shocked when 1500 NASA scientists arrived to keep the protests under control.
Said one protester, “We were gearing up for yet another stretch of violence and authoritarian oppression; instead, we found ourselves surrounded by astronauts and scientists! I’m excited that instead of having my brain bashed with a baton, this week it’ll get bashed with knowledge!” CLICK HERE TO READ MORE