Ballard C. Boyd is an Emmy Award-winning & Peabody Award-winning director & producer, based in New York City.

He has been a member of the Directors Guild of America since 2018 and is currently a producer & segment director at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he has directed over 150 segments on CBS.

His narrative work has been broadcast on CBS, Showtime, Comedy Central, HBO Family, Logo, E!, ESPN.com, and NBC.com, and screened at over 4 dozen film festivals.

He has directed commercials and branded content for brands including Google, Wild Turkey, Captain Morgan, Mountain Dew, 3M, DICK’s Sporting Goods, Bounce, LongHorn Steakhouse, ACE Brand, NRG/Reliant, and Popular Mechanics.

Born in Louisville, KY and raised south of Nashville, TN, Ballard attended Emerson College in Boston, Mass. where he graduated magna cum laude in 3 1/2 years with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film.

After moving to New York City, he began a hard push toward directing with the “quantity” approach to improving his craft. His music video “Ode To Kulele” by Mal Blum was awarded as one of the Top 10 Music Videos of 2009 (#10), by the viewing audience of MTV/Logo’s The Click List.

In 2014, his music video “Runaway” by sElf was selected as one of the Top 10 Music Videos of 2014 by Rolling Stone Magazine (#10), as well as one of The 10 Greatest Cat Music Videos of All Time (#4) by Yahoo! Music.

In 2021, he received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Talk Special (Live) for his work on Stephen Colbert’s Election Night 2020: Democracy’s Last Stand: Building Back America Great Again Better 2020 (yep, actual title) on Showtime; as well as a Peabody Award for his work on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

His work has been featured in The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, Variety, The A.V. Club, MTV, Vulture, Slate, Ad Age, People Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, and The Huffington Post.

Ballard C. Boyd lives in Sunnyside, Queens, NY with his wife & daughter, and plays the ukulele.

Selected Press

Deadline Hollywood – The Late Show Parodies Agents In Covid Sketch: “We Just Signed An Overall Deal With Florida”
Variety – “Stephen Colbert, Alan Alda and Jon Batiste Channel BTS in “Excuses Song”
The AV Club – “Stephen Colbert Has The Next The Queen’s Gambit All Squared Up”
Entertainment Weekly – “Jeff Goldblum Does Your Taxes (kind of) in Stephen Colbert Sketch”
The AV Club – “Let Jeff Goldblum Do Your Taxes* (*Do Not Let Goldblum Do Your Taxes)”
The AV Club – “Stephen Colbert mocks Netflix’s sexy serial killer obsession with The Dick Nighttime Murders”
Ad Age – “Colbert Delivers The Ultimate Spoof of Super Bowl Commercial Cliches”
The Hollywood Reporter – “Stephen Colbert Shares Fake Emotionally Manipulative Super Bowl Ad”
Entertainment Weekly – “Keegan-Michael Key, Ellie Kemper help Colbert make his own Bad movie franchise”
Slate – “Keegan-Michael Key, Ellie Kemper and Bob Odenkirk Star in a Montage of Bad Movie Trailers”
io9.com – “Werner Herzog Gets His Nihilistic Hands All Over Star Wars: Episode IX in This Parody Trailer”
Entertainment Weekly – “Star Wars gets existential with Stephen Colbert’s Werner Herzog spoof”
MTV – “Chance the Rapper Singing The Arthur Theme Song Is The Best Thing To Happen All Week”
Rolling Stone – “Chance the Rapper, Stephen Colbert Recreate ‘Arthur’ Theme”
The Huffington Post – “Colbert Shows Off Facebook’s Newest Way For People To Express Themselves”
Rolling Stone – “The 20 Most Awesome Music Videos of 2014” [#10]
Yahoo TV – “Paws Up – Watch The 10 Greatest Cat Music Videos of All Time” [#4]
MTV.com – “Get Your Daily Dose Of Cats Playing Synthesizers With “Runaway”
Entertainment Weekly – “Cats Make Synthesizer Jams for sElf’s ‘Runaway’ “
Yahoo Music – “Is Self’s ‘Runaway’ the Greatest Cat Video Ever?”
People Magazine – “Cats Rock Out and Play Synth in This Tail-Quivering Music Video from sElf”
Nashville Scene – “Self’s ‘Runaway’ Features A Slew of Delightful Cats”
The Huffington Post – “Lil Jon Debuts New Video ‘Drink'”
New York Magazine / Vulture.com – “Watch Lil Jon’s Crazy New Video (Featuring Oversexed Seniors), “Drink”
Creativity Online – “Google: Developer Stories”
The New York Times – “Magazine Association Renames Itself”
The Huffington Post – “Mad Men” ‘Jumps The Shark’ Imagines What 10th Season Would Look Like”