Executive Producer

Michael Eldridge is an award-winning director, writer, and producer with years of experience and over 300 programs to his credit. During his career and now with his company, Barataria Productions, he has produced all manner of programming, from traditional television to downloadable content.

From 1999 to early 2003, he worked as a supervising producer for Towers Productions in Chicago. During his tenure with the company, he co-created, wrote, and supervised the History Channel series, True Crime Authors, and was the supervising producer of the launch of A&E's Minute By Minute, a series that received an Emmy nomination for the episode "Attack on the Pentagon."  He also wrote and supervised Investigative Reports (A&E), working on investigations into the rise of imported organized crime (Modern Mobs), cancer clusters in the Midwest (Nuclear Fallout), and the meth scene in Idaho (for Vigilante Justice—the Ken Arrasmith Story). In addition, he was the head writer for Towers' Productions' launch of the popular Weather Channel series, Storm Stories. Other notable projects during his tenure were The History of Unconventional Warfare (writer/supervising producer), Times Millennium Capsule (writer), and he wrote numerous episodes for A&E's The Unexplained, American Justice, and Biography.

In the summer of 2004, he started his production company, Barataria Productions, a full high-definition production facility. He continued working on social causes, most notably for LGBT rights with here! networks, and for HIV/AIDS research. His short form documentaries on HIV/AIDS and gay rights garnered the company a CINE Golden Eagle, 2 Telly Awards, a silver Omni Award, four Davey Awards, two Summit Awards, and three AEGIS awards, as well as the Ribbon of Hope, a special honor by the Academy of Television of Arts and Science for the special Focus On: HIV and AIDS. He was recently honored with a commission by GMHC, the leading organization fighting HIV/AIDS in New York City, to direct a film commemorating its 25th Anniversary. The film recently won Best Short Documentary at the NY AIDS Film Festival.

Barataria also produced Auction Adventure, a lifestyle series on the Fine Living Channel. Mr. Eldridge is the series producer, host, and head writer of the Telly Award-winning series. He has also been commissioned for another pilot with Fine Living, currently in production, on consumer spending. In late 2005, he wrote and produced a high-definition special on the Boost Mobile Pro of Surf for Fox Sports Network, and Barataria has continued its extreme sports work by partnering with Union, the new on-demand extreme network. He also created here! At the Movies, a half-hour review show. The series has been a model for the network as a dual-use production; the series runs on the linear channel, and shorter versions of the reviews are distributed via various download services, including MSNBC and iTunes.

Mr. Eldridge has also worked on the development side of production—in 2003, he was named the head of development for Carlton Productions LLC, the East Coast arm of Carlton UK. When the company merged with Granada, Mr. Eldridge worked as a freelance development producer for Granada America. During this time, he continued working as a producer and writer of various documentaries, including National Geographic's Interpol Investigates. His work appeared on PBS (Best Friend Forgotten—2005 Genesis Award Winner), WNET in New York (Innovations—Building to Extremes), and CBS (various sports documentaries). Through Barataria, he has continued to work as development consultant and freelance writer for a number of production companies. Mr. Eldridge is currently developing a full slate of unscripted projects.

In the fall of 2006, he partnered with writer/producer Brad Rothschild to direct the feature film Homeland. Currently on the festival circuit, it has won Best First Feature (Delray Film Fest), and been a Jury Finalist at the Jacksonville International Film Fest, where it was also honored with the Audience Award for Best Feature. He is also developing screenplays: he co-wrote a feature film for Emerging Productions in NY, Beauty Remains, directed by Ann Hu (Shadow Magic), which debuted in New York in October 2007. He is currently writing her next feature, Made in China. He has optioned two more of his original screenplays, April 22nd and Redeeming the Time, and has a number of projects currently in development, including Weapon of Choice, Fool, and Cold Irons Bound. Mr. Eldridge began his career as a playwright, improvisational comedian, and theater director. He has produced plays in New York, Boston, and at Scotland's Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and performed in Chicago, New York, and Boston. He works frequently as a lecturer and professor, teaching screenwriting and documentary writing at the collegiate and continuing education level. He recently contributed to Gotham Writer's Workshop Screenwriting Manual.