Claudia Dzienny (née Pickering) is an Australian director, screenwriter and producer - and she's stoked about it.
Look at that face. Stoked. And she's toning it down for that picture. Although honestly that picture was about ten years ago and pre-kids so now she’s just as stoked but significantly better looking.
Dzienny’s comedy filmmaking career began with acting which lead to writing comedy sketches... and they just kept getting longer. To be more specific, it began when she and her mate Anna convinced Danny Trejo - movie star, ex-convict and face of Old El Paso - to perform a Backstreet Boys-style synchronised dance under a dimly-lit bridge. They did not ask the 65-yr old to take off his shirt, he did that all on his own as they evidently have that effect on people.
Since then, international film festivals have showered her two feature films Frisky and Winning Formula with official selections and awards, which is a nice change from when she and her mate Tori used to steal stickers in first grade and wear them on their school uniform collars as though they had been legitimately awarded them. Although, her time completing a Showrunner, Director and Writer’s attachment on Channel Nine’s dramedy Bad Mothers found her drawing from her unsavoury days of petty classroom crime.
It surprised the pants off Dzienny when Frisky was distributed by Madman and optioned by Jungle Entertainment, which is handy as she spends a good portion of every morning pantsless and chasing around her two children. She did manage to keep her pants on, if you can call cheap leggings from Kmart pants, while directing the Resting Pitch Face webseries for Google and the outrageous comedy medical/crime webseries Paramedics SUV. Dzienny is currently in development on multiple features and TV shows including Create NSW funded features Butter Paper (Knives Out on an architecture office retreat) and Wanderbust (Thelma and Louise on a Contiki tour) and Screen Australia funded animated series Cheetah (Veep at a budget airline) as well as live action series Downline (Succession in a cheap pyramid scheme) and Pony Up (Snatch in a private all-girls school) with mixed pants status. One of her extracurriculars includes running the Freshflix Film Festival in Sydney (Vivid) and Los Angeles (AiF) which is mostly just an excuse to take photos at the media wall to update her LinkedIn profile.
The above projects have allowed her to build her company Boobytrap Entertainment, thereby avoiding the field of Architecture in which she holds a Masters degree - a method superior to holding her breath until she faints, which was her avoidance tactic of choice up until about age three. Kids can do that. Look it up.
Dzienny studied comedy improv at Upright Citizen's Brigade, acting at NIDA and NYFA, and screenwriting intensively at NYU... So she has a bachelor’s degree in Bulls**t Artistry, which was helpful when creating comedy sketches with her troupe Frothpocalypse, for playing the pinger-chewing festival fiend Sam in Adele Vuko/Jungle Entertainment’s The Hitchhiker and for winning Tropfest Tropvine with a giraffe telling a dad joke. This love of animals is evident in her illustrations where Dzienny (as thedarclaud) once drew a jellyfish wearing a Santa hat captioned “Jellyfishmas” which is second only to her "Kanye Asada" illustration of Kanye West trapped in a taco.
Dzienny took her first stab at directing drama (or more like a shank) with the iconic Aussie series Wentworth spinoff radio play podcast for Audible and Freemantle Media titled Wentworth: The Fall Girl. Most recently, Dzienny directed hysterically funny shortform comedy series starring a Nigella Lawson doppelgänger Flawsome: Sex, Drugs and Recipes for SlapBang, garnering Best Director at Sydney Webfest.
Next up, Dzienny will be directing relationship comedy with a monster baby, SCOBY.
At any given time, you'll find her somewhere, with a group of frothers, making stuff.