Greg and Colin Strause, collectively self-titled as the Brothers Strause, are a duo of American brother film directors, producers and special effects artists, most known for directing and Skyline, which were both commercially successful but critical failures. They are the founders of Hydraulx, a special effects company.
Life and career
They began experimenting with visual effects in their early teens using Amiga computers. In 1995, they moved to Los Angeles and started working on the special effects for The X-Files film. From there they moved on to big-budget films such as The Nutty Professor, Volcano and the iceberg sequence of James Cameron's Academy Award-winning Titanic. They then broke into the music video and commercial arena, handling the special effects for artists such as U2, Britney Spears, Godsmack, Tool, Powerman 5000 and Aerosmith as well as spots for Nike, Jeep and Pepsi. In 2000, Colin won an MTV Video Music Award for Best Art Direction for the Red Hot Chili Peppers' video, "Californication." This led the brothers to start directing under the moniker "The Brothers Strause," and their Linkin Park clip "Crawling" was nominated for Best Direction and Best Rock Video at the 2001 VMA's. Other artists they have directed for include A Perfect Circle, Nickelback, the hit English/Spanish single "Don't Say Goodbye" & "Si Tú Te Vas" music video in 2002 by Paulina Rubio, Opeth, Flyleaf, Disturbed, Staind, Taproot and Abandoned Pools. Their music video for A Perfect Circle's "Passive" marked their second collaboration with the band. The video was shot almost entirely with thermal cameras and featured on the Constantine soundtrack and DVD. The Strause's have performed special effects work on such films as 300, ', Fantastic Four, ', and The Day After Tomorrow, for which Greg won a British Academy Award. The Brothers have directed spots for Coca-Cola, World of Warcraft, Gatorade, Ford Motor Company, the United States Marine Corps, Toyota, Fresca, Universal Studios and Sony PlayStation's God of War. The Brothers Strause made their film directing debut by directing , a sequel to Paul W. S. Anderson's Alien vs. Predator. The film was released on Christmas 2007 to extremely negative reviews. In the fall of 2008, the Brothers directed 50 Cent's music video "Get Up" as well as commercials for Pennzoil and Shell, in addition to supplying some visual effects for Avatar. In 2010, the Brothers directed and produced the science fiction thriller Skyline, written by Joshua Cordes and Liam O'Donnell, starring Scottie Thompson, Eric Balfour, Donald Faison and David Zayas. The film was met with fairly universally poor reviews but given its budget was US$10–$20 million, it performed fairly well commercially, grossing a total of nearly US$79 million worldwide. Sony Pictures Entertainment filed a lawsuit against the brothers and Hydralux, who had been hired to provide visual effects for . Sony alleged that they had used time and resources meant for Battle: Los Angeles, and instead used them on Skyline, which was suspiciously similar. However, Sony dropped the lawsuit in 2011, shortly before Skylines home video debut, satisfied that their concerns about the competing film proved to be unfounded.
