Draft:Dan Fill

Dan Fill (born May 10, 1973) is a Canadian-Australian creator, producer and entrepreneur. Known primarily for innovative new forms of entertainment, he is the co-founder of Dark Slope Studios with partner Raja Khanna.

Dan and his companies have received various accolodates including a Bafta nomination 2001 for Angela Anaconda Online, multiple Australian Academy Awards (AACTAs) for The Adventures of Figaro Pho, Asian Animation Awards, Kidscreen Awards for Figaro Pho and Wild Kratts Online, Canadian Gemini Awards for Angela Anaconda Online.

Dan is recognized as one of the key innovators who commissioned and launched The Australian Broadcasting Corporations streaming platform iView. In Canada Dan is also recognized from Deloitte as Innovative Fast 50 Company for his bleeding edge entertainment experiences including the free roam virtual reality theme park experience Scarygirl Mission Maybee and the Transformers Decepticon Invasion experience for Dave & Busters. Dan was named Australia's Digital Innovator of 2008 The Australian newspaper .

Dan has produced over two dozen original projects ranging from high end cgi animation shows such as The Adventures of Figaro Pho to free roam virtual reality experiences for theme parks. His production company operates a virtual production soundstage facility where they service high profile television and film productions including such shows as Heated Rivalry, The Boys, Gen V, Hate The Player and commercials ranging from Jeep, Infinity, Kia and A&W.

Early life

Dan was born Daniel Fill on May 10, 1973 in North York, Ontario Canada.The youngest of two,his mother (Andrea Rose) was Jewish of Eastern European background grew up in Victoria B.C. and father (Ian Fill) Christian was a war baby born in the UK .Dan's father, was a doctor, intellect and avid chess player; his mother, a jeweler for the family jewelry store Rose's. Dan's family moved back to Victoria B.C where Dan grew up attending Willows Elementary School for French immersion followed by St. Michael's University School (SMUS) for high school.

Dan attended University of Ottawa studying a Bachelor of Business Administration with a focus on Mass Communications. Dan attended Ryerson and achieved a Bachelor of Applied Arts in Radio and Television.

Career

Dan started his career as a writer and story editor working for Cambium Entertainment (CCI entertainment, now Neshama). At age 21 Dan wrote several episodes of the Disney Channel animated series Monster By Mistake that took advantage of the cutting edge Houdini cgi software. Dan took over story editing a live action animation series Nilus the Sandman when he was 22 years old. Dan pivoted to developing interactive experiences related to tv shows, as it provided him with more control and freedom. Dan would eventually be hired by Decode Entertainment (now WildBrain) to create over a dozen innovative and award winning interactive projects including Bafta nominated Angela Anaconda Online, the Zack Files interactive and projects for The Jim Henson Company, The Undergrads for MTV and Aardman Entertainment. Dan's projects led to international partnerships with networks around the world including ITV, ZDF Nickelodeon, CBC, BBC, SuperRTL and many more. Dan traveled frequently to Cannes , London and New York to demonstrate and license Decode's innovative projects. In 2004 he was invited to Australia to showcase some of the innovations. Dan would fall in love with Australia and would move to Melbourne from Canada in 2005 to accept a role at the Australia Broadcasting Corporation as Head of Multiplatform for ABC TV. Dan would go on to briefly oversee original programming for ABC2, launch ABC's podcasting services for shows such as Chris Lilley's Summer Heights High and oversee the publishing of The Chaser's War on Everything and commission ABC's iView streaming service.

Dan would leave the ABC to co-found Chocolate Liberation Front with former ABC colleague Frank Verheggen.The production company was best known for the series The New Adventures of Figaro Pho, which Dan and Frank co-produced with VFX house Luma Pictures in Season 2 and Omnilab Entertainment in Season 1. The series that followed the adventures of a character who had every phobia from A to Z, was favourably compared to The Nightmare Before Christmas due to it's stunning visual appeal thanks to creator Luke Jurevicius.

Another project co-produced by Chocolate Liberation Front was the 26-episode series Sherazade The Untold Stories with Hahn Film (Germany) and Toonz Animation (India).The production for Channel Ten in Australia was troubled by delays and overages saw the project outsourced to nearly two dozen services studios in India. In 2015 Dan traveled around India from Trivandrum, to New Delhi to Hyderabad to review the production pipeline. The show as eventually eventually completed, however Dan returned after 5 weeks in India with a mysterious form of hepatitis that was unfamiliar in Australia. Dan spent nearly a month with hot sweats and fever and was put into isolation in hospital for 2 weeks for testing and observation. While the infection was never fully classified, Dan was eventually cleared of the infection.

Dan eventually returned to Canada, partnering with old colleague Raja Khanna to launch Dark Slope, an immersive spatialized entertainment company focused on high end location based entertainment experiences. Due to a number of factors, including COVID 19, the company eventually pivoted to building one of North America's largest LED volume soundstage complex.s. The company continues to produce innovative content ranging from motion capture animation, XR games and experiences for the at home market and cutting edge service work on it's virtual production soundstages.

One of the fixtures of Dark Slope is it's focus on helping to support the under represented. Since 2024, Dark Slope is a partner with Ryan Reynold's & Blake Lively's not-for-profit Group Effort Initiative, and has invested heavily in providing mentorship, paid internships and workshops to support unrepresented groups a leg up. Dark Slope has also worked with OBAC, OYA and CFC providing access to Dark Slope's studios facilities, team and mentorship to help black, indigenous and under represented groups to create content and try and tell their stories using virtual reality and virtual production.

Personal life

Dan is in a common-law relationship with Fiona Woods. He has two sons, Noah Fill (biological) and Marcus Simone (stepson). Dan and Noah are both dual citizens of Canada and Australia. Fiona and Marcus are Australian citizens with permanent residency in Canada.