CK THORNTON

Cortney “CK” Thornton is a cinematic pictorialist born and raised in Southern California. She graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a Bachelor’s in Science in 2011 and has learned from some of the best filmmakers in the entertainment business. The first film set CK interned on was Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master” and worked as a Production Assistant on big budget productions like Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight Rises”. In 2011, CK worked for four years as a Producer’s Assistant for both JoAnne Sellar and Daniel Lupi and assisted Paul Thomas Anderson as well on his film, “Inherent Vice”. 

Since 2013, Cortney produced multiple award winning short films, web series (“Talents Web Series”, an Austin Film Fest selection and “Simi Valley” distributed by BlackPills/Vice Company), documentaries (“In Search of Voodoo”, Academy-Award Nominated Actor Djimon Hounsou’s directorial debut) and a feature film (“The Dreams of Rene Sendam” 2021).

In 2018, Thornton made the move into the Art and Set Decoration departments as she wanted to learn the design and decoration language of narrative film. Cortney worked under the guise of well seasoned Production Designers like John Paino (“Dallas Buyers Club”), Dan Bishop (“Madmen”) and Greg Grande (“Friends”) and Decorators like Amy Wells (“Clueless”) and Devynne Lauchner (“Kajillionaire”) on shows such as HBO’S Big Little Lies Season 2, Apple+’s The Morning Show and For All Mankind and Hulu’s “Unprisoned”. 

In 2021, Cortney made her directorial debut film, “The Drop Off”, an official selection of the Toronto Women’s International Film Festival and in 2022 completed her second film, “Mother Martyr Salt & Saint”, winning multiple accolades including the Audience Award at Highland Park Independent Film Festival. Currently, she is in post-production on her third film, a surrealist cinema poem, writing a feature and diving head first into the visual realm of music videos.