Dinh Long Thai is an innovative and wildly creative young visual artist whose star is on the rise.  As an Asian American commercial director and editor, Dinh believes the child in his heart greatly influences the sense of honesty and playfulness that is apparent in his visual style.  Born in Vietnam during the war, the Thai family first fled to France then moved again to a suburb just outside of Los Angeles, California. The youngest of six children, Dinh quickly embraced his multi-ethnic surroundings.  The blend of American pop culture and Asian tradition gave him an opportunity to experience the variances in people’s lives.  His current body of work contains a mixture of these variances; otherworldly love, playful storytelling, unexpected humor, youthfulness, and last but not least, sneakers.

After developing his photographic eye at a city college, Thai's dream was to create a visual autobiography (which he is still developing) and was fortunate enough to be accepted into Art Center’s film program.  During his studies, Dinh volunteered to develop and teach the first Art Center Kids filmmaking class titled, "Behind The Scenes."  The class required kids from grades 4-8 to conceptualize, shoot, and edit a piece in five 2 hour sessions.  That’s right, 10 hours, which makes the 24 hour film festival seem like a life time.  After years of learning, practicing and teaching he went on to direct and edit commercials for some of the worlds biggest clients including Nike, Converse, Vans, Starbucks, and Footlocker.  Dinh recently wrapped a Nike Basketball short documentary titled, 1Love, which he directed, shot, and edited.  1Love fuses the lives of two high school basketball players through the words of a street poet and is now being used as the foundation of marketing and product development for Nike Basketball.

Dinh’s visual storytelling experience as a director and editor, helps him understand the importance of urbanism, style, culture, realism, branding, products, special effects, as well as the conventions of good casting, location scouting, art direction, wardrobe, photography and lighting, timing and movement.  This knowledge contributes to his fluidity when working with clients, agency creatives, and production artists to efficiently deliver for revisions and approvals during post production. 

On his off days, Dinh enjoys watching basketball, playing video games, using technology, traveling, learning, eating, buying sneakers, family, friends, spending time with children, especially his 13 soon to be 14 nieces and nephews.