Pony R. Horton

Pony R. Horton is an American filmmaker/journalist/actor of Irish and Cherokee descent. He has lent his talents, usually in the area of technical or visual effects work, to a number of low-and-medium budget feature films, four of which were produced by Roger Corman, including Masque of the Red Death (1989), and Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II (1989), as a matte artist/cinematographer. He also created matte paintings and photography for the Paulco films Fate, and Eternity (1989) both of which were co-produced by actor Jon Voight. Pony began his career in film, as do many, as a "gofer" and janitor/general laborer at Van der Veer Photo Effects, as well as working as a projectionist at Valley Projection, both in 1978 in Burbank, California. At Van der Veer, he was one of a small staff who lent their talents on a number of films, including Star Trek The Motion Picture; Superman; and Pony created certain specific effects for 1941 and Nightwing, mostly doing rotoscoping. By 1982, Pony had become the Director of Photography at Valley Cable TV's Public Access studio, where he was in charge of the 3-camera studio and supervised the lighting and photography on over 120 1/2-hour talk shows. During that time, Pony created and produced a public affairs program called Whipping Around L.A.! which featured places of cultural and recreational interest in the Southland. In 1983, Pony began producing and directing TV commercials for the local Los Angeles market, including the first AIDS Awareness Public Service Announcements ever aired in the U.S. By the late 1980s, Pony was one of the main operators of the Mitsubishi IMAX Theater at the California Museum of Science & Industry. In 1992, Pony left the west coast to move to the Washington, D.C. suburb of Reston, Virginia. There he joined the staff of the Times Community Newspapers as a photojournalist and writer, publishing hundreds of images and dozens of articles from 1992 to 1994. One photo/story combination garnered him the First Place Virginia Press Association award in 1993. By late 1994, Pony was back in Los Angeles, doing freelance journalism for several newspapers and magazines. Since 2001, Pony has been producing a lifework under his own company banner, Gravity Arch Media, a docudrama on the life of William Mulholland, titled A Test Of Integrity, which stars veteran character actor Victor Izay in the role of Mulholland, the man who brought water to Los Angeles in 1913. Pony acts as both host and character, playing Mulholland's assistant, H.A. Van Norman. Pony has also produced and directed numerous TV commercials and industrials in recent years under the Gravity Arch Media name. Pony considers it ironic that today he is fighting AIDS himself, after having created those PSA's urging safe sex. One of Pony's other skills is whip cracking, and he is currently producing an instructional video on the lost art of whip work.