James Rait

Background

About James Rait

James Rait is a Canadian Director, 2nd Unit Director, 1st AD and Production Manager with credits on over four hundred broadcast hours of film and television. After studying film production at Confederation College in the late eighties, James moved to Toronto where his first screen credit was on CBC’s Street Legal. Over the next ten years, he worked his way up the AD department ladder before landing an assignment directing 2nd Unit on Earth: Final Conflict for Tribune Entertainment. After three seasons of directing 2nd Unit on nearly sixty episodes he was given an episode of his own in season five. Since then James has directed episodes of ‘Forensic Factor' and ‘Alien Mysteries’ for The Discovery Channel and directed 2nd Unit on the series ‘Veritas’ for Touchstone Television, ’Missing’ for Lifetime, ’Monster Warriors’ for YTV and the Andy Garcia feature film ‘A Dark Truth’. As a seasoned 1st AD, James has worked on dozens of series and films across Canada and in half a dozen countries around the world for both domestic and international broadcasters and distributors. In 2018 James was invited to join a team of independent creatives to re-boot the seminal kid’s educational series ‘Blue’s Clues’ that premiered in 2019. After eighty episodes of Seasons 1 through 5, James was an integral part of the series as an on-set creative charged with coordinating real-time pre-visualization as well as scheduling the show’s twenty + episodes a season. This has flowed over to working on the ground-breaking interactive ‘Blue’s Clues - Play Along Video’ iPad app that launched in 2020. Other recent credits as 1st AD include 2nd Unit on seasons two, three and four of 'The Boys' for Amazon, Years Of Heroes’, a mini-series about the Han Xin dynasty of ancient China for New Tang Dynasty television, the first season of the teen comedy 'Popularity Papers' for YTV and BBC and Season 2 of ‘Holly Hobbie’ for Hulu. James is expounding on his love for green screen and is currently exploring new possibilities in the world of virtual production.