Ben joined Lightbox in 2019. He was previously Director of Development at Dragonfly, where he led the development on a raft of major series including BBC1’s Life and Birth and BBC2’s Last Chance Clinic, and films such as the multi award-winning My Dad, The Peace Deal and Me.
Prior to this, Ben was Head of Development at Minnow Films, where he developed series including Channel 4 espionage format Spies, and BBC2 true crime investigation The Chillenden Murders, as well as single films such as the Grierson award-winning The Last Survivors and the HBO feature documentary The Mystery of D.B. Cooper.
Ben has also worked in development teams at some of the UK’s top production companies, as well as at the BBC, and spent a number of years in production on series including Who Do You Think You Are?
Originally from the Midwest, Carolyn Sperry Lewis has produced multiple documentary series including AMC Visionaries Eli Roth’s History of Horror, Autobiography for A&E, as well as Breakthrough and Origins for National Geographic. Prior to that, she was a production executive with Viacom overseeing a wide variety of production slates for Vh1, Logo and CMT. A graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia, Carolyn began her career in Washington, D.C. in news covering politics, space and aviation before relocating to Los Angeles.
Ed Perkins is an Oscar nominated documentary filmmaker whose films have won numerous international awards.
Ed has directed films for Netflix, the BBC, The Guardian, National Geographic and Channel 4 and was recently named a BAFTA Breakthrough Brit.
After graduating from the University of North Carolina as a Morehead-Cain scholar in 2009, Ed directed the behind-the-scenes documentaries for Project Nim, The Eagle, the BAFTA winning The Imposter, and the Academy Award winning Searching For Sugar man.
In 2015 Ed made his first feature documentary Garnet’s Gold, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival 2014, won a Grierson Award for Best Newcomer, won Best International Documentary awards at Docville and Jozi Film Festival, and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at both Tribeca and the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Ed then went on to make Bare Knuckle Fight Club, of which the Times said: “You will not have seen a better documentary this year”. Two of Ed’s short films have won Vimeo “Short of the Week” and “Staff Pick” accolades, including If I Die which has had more than 1,000,000 views over multiple platforms.
In 2018 Ed directed Black Sheep, a documentary short for The Guardian, which won 13 international awards and was nominated for Best Documentary Short at the 91st Academy Awards.
Jonathan Chinn is an Academy Award-nominated and double Emmy Award-winning producer and co-founder of Lightbox.
Prior to launching Lightbox in 2014 with his UK-based cousin, Academy Award winning producer Simon Chinn, Jonathan was one of the most respected non-fiction television showrunners in the US, winning an Emmy for American High (Fox/PBS) and the Television Academy’s prestigious Honors Award for 30 Days (FX), the latter of which went on to become FX’s highest rated unscripted series. Other producing credits include Kid Nation (CBS), Push Girls (Sundance), and Hotel Hell (FOX).
In the ten years since Lightbox’s inception, the company has become one of the most prolific and highly regarded producers of premium non-fiction content in the world and has worked with all the major buyers including Netflix, Apple TV+, HBO, Nat Geo, Amazon, FX, Hulu, Disney+ and Showtime, among others. Its films and limited series have premiered at the Sundance, Telluride, Cannes, Berlin and London film festivals and have won and been nominated for many major awards.
Recent projects include: Donyale Luna: Supermodel (feature doc for MAX); The Mission (feature doc for National Geographic and theatrical release); The Princess (feature doc for HBO and theatrical release); Spector (4-part series for Showtime/Sky), Sins of Our Mother (3-part series for Netflix); Fastest Women on Earth (feature doc for HBO Max); Torn (feature doc for Nat Geo); Tina (feature doc for HBO and Universal); Supervillain: The Making of Tekashi 6ix9ine (3-part series for Showtime); Hip Hop Uncovered (5-part series for FX/Hulu); Tell Me Who I Am (feature doc for Netflix) and Whitney (feature doc for theatrical release).
Simon Chinn is a double Oscar-winning producer who is responsible for some of the most successful feature documentaries of recent years.
In 2005, he conceived and produced his first theatrical feature documentary, Man on Wire. It went on to win over 40 international awards including the BAFTA for Outstanding British Film and the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. He followed that up with a string of award winning feature documentaries including Project Nim, The Imposter, The Green Prince, Garnet’s Gold, Bolshoi Babylon and Searching for Sugar Man which also won a BAFTA and an Academy Award and made over $20m at the international box office. In 2015 he teamed up with his old school friend Louis Theroux to produce My Scientology Movie, Theroux’s first theatrical doc. It grossed £1.1 million at the UK box office, making it one of the highest grossing feature docs of all time in the UK.
Simon launched Lightbox in 2014 with his LA based cousin, Emmy-winning producer Jonathan Chinn. Focused on producing high-end non-fiction – series, feature docs and shorts – for multiple platforms, Lightbox has completed major projects for Xbox Studios, Netflix, Fusion, Esquire Network, Channel 4, BBC2, FX, National Geographic and ESPN. Its feature doc on the 1992 LA riots, LA 92, for National Geographic, won a primetime Emmy and was shortlisted for an Academy Award. Lightbox’s latest feature doc, Untouchable, tells the story of Harvey Weinstein in the context of the new revelations which came to light in November 2017. It launched at Sundance in January 2019 and will be released around the world later in the year.
Vanessa joined Lightbox as Chief Operating Officer in 2015 after more years than she is admitting to as a freelance Producer and Line Producer on many award-winning premium documentaries and independent feature films. Vanessa oversees all production, business affairs and operations for Lightbox in both the London and LA offices (backed by an outstanding team) and co-produces all Lightbox’s feature documentary content. Her credits include, LA92, My Scientology Movie, Tina, Untouchable, Whitney, Tell Me Who I Am, Oscar nominated short, Black Sheep and the multi award-winning, The Imposter.
As Exec Producer for Lightbox, Suzanne has overseen multiple premium projects including Camden for Disney Star, The Diamond Heist for Netflix, Bad Host: Hunting the Couchsurfing Predator for Sky Documentaries, Marilyn Manson Unmasked for Channel 4, Sophie: A Murder in West Cork for Netflix, Discovery / Amazon Prime’s Curse of the Chippendales and longitudinal feature doc series Return to the Moon for Nat Geo following NASA’s Artemis mission. She’s also overseen the multi award winning The Traffickers for Fusion, Secrets of Miss America for A&E, Discovery feature doc, Cajun Navy, BBC Three’s Mim Shaikh: Finding Dad, Food Exposed with Nelufar Hedayat and Death by Delivery for Fusion and Gypsy’s Revenge and Til Death do us Part for ID.
Prior to Lightbox, Suzanne was Series Editor on Unreported World for Channel 4, overseeing many award-winning and nominated films including Surviving Ebola (DuPont 2016 winner, Emmy nominated), The City that Beat ISIS (RTS Nominated) and The Invisible People (RTS nominated). Before that she was Executive Producer for Tiger Aspect, helming BAFTA nominated BBC series Prescott: The Class System and Me and running the Specialist Factual slate.
