Eric Sherman has been involved with the film art and industry nearly
his entire life. He was born in Los Angeles and grew up on the Hollywood
backlots watching his father, Vincent Sherman, direct many of the
movies' greatest stars, including Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn,
Clark Gable, Richard Burton, Paul Newman, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis,
Rita Hayworth and Ava Gardner.

Sherman graduated from Yale University where, after starting out
as a mathematics major, he co-founded the Yale Film Society and
became Yale's first Scholar of the House in Film. His first movie,
a documentary, Charles Lloyd-Journey Within, was screened
at the New York Film Festival and was reviewed by Variety as "…perhaps
the finest film ever made about a jazz musician." He went on
to produce, direct, photograph and edit numerous documentary portraits
of leading scholars, artists, athletes and civic leaders.

In 1976, he founded Film Transform, Inc., a full-service production
company which has made some of virtually every kind of "moving
image" product-including feature films, television programs,
educational series for PBS, documentaries, corporate profiles, instructional
videos and commercials. Recent projects by Film Transform, which
Eric has produced and/or directed, have included the PBS series
Futures with Jaime Escalante (which has won more than 50
awards, including the Peabody Broadcasting Award), The Marilyn
Files (a 2-hour television program about the life and death
of Marilyn Monroe) and the action-adventure movie, Trained to
Fight.

In 1997, Sherman co-produced and co-starred in Pep Squad,
an independent feature shot in Kansas by Steve Balderson, a former
student of Sherman's. Also in 1997, Sherman executive produced in
Connecticut Mystic Nights and Pirate Fights, an independent
feature directed by another former student, Doug Lively.

In 2000, he produced the film After Freedom, written and
directed by yet another former student, Vahe Babaian, shot locally
in Los Angeles. Sherman's company continues with an active production
slate including a number of individual and corporate clients for
whom Film Transform conducts all phases of film and/or video production,
postproduction, marketing, distribution and even, when appropriate,
duplication and packaging.

In addition to his production activities, Sherman serves as the
chief consultant to The Gallup Organization (the world's largest
public opinion and marketing research firm) and its Motion Picture
Industry Research Division. He has also been a directing and production
consultant to Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, The Mount Company
and Warner Sisters Productions, and has worked with several of Hollywood's
leading writers, actors, producers and directors, successfully ensuring
on-time and on-budget delivery of their products.

Along with his production and consulting activities, he teaches
production, directing and film business at two colleges-Art Center
College of Design in Pasadena and California Institute of the Arts
(CalArts) in Valencia-and The Los Angeles Film School in Hollywood.
He has given guest lectures at numerous other educational and cultural
institutions, and he served as Mellon Lecturer on the Arts at Cal
Tech.

He has written four books on filmmaking and the film industry,
several of which are used as textbooks at colleges and universities
around the world. These include Directing the Film (currently
in its 13th printing) and his most recent title, Selling Your
Film-A Guide to the Contemporary Marketplace, the revised and
updated 2nd edition of which was published in 1999. He is a regular
columnist for the magazine MovieMaker and is a member of
the board of trustees of the American Cinematheque, and biographies
of him appear in Marquis' Who's Who in the West and numerous
other publications. He lives with his wife, Eugenia, and their two
children in Hollywood, California.

Sherman describes the overall purpose of his work as being "to
improve the quality and aesthetic excellence of motion pictures
for the benefit of audiences around the world."