Nicole Russin-McFarland

Nicole Russin-McFarland is a talented multi-hyphenate whose skills span across several creative fields. As a film score composer who is also a film director, screenwriter, and actress, she has broken the barriers of female stereotypes in the entertainment world. Her music has gained millions of digital streams, inspired by the 19th century romantic era and her lifelong love of mainstream artists.

A self described "Midwestern gal in Wonderland" spending her days swapping between school and her parent's home in downstate Illinois, weekends in downtown Chicago, and time at her aunt and uncle's home in Urbana, from a young age, Russin-McFarland showed an interest in music and film. She studied flute and composed her own works, pretending to score the movies she was directing. As a junior high school student, she often wrote film plot outlines and film score themes during class for the movies she dreamed of making. Her love for film music drew her to composers like James Horner and Hans Zimmer, while her favorite film directors were James Cameron and Peter Jackson. After watching The Fellowship of the Ring, the first installment of The Lord of the Rings franchise, she started writing her own remake of The Time Machine with the dream that someday her 14 year old self's ideas would become a real movie.

Russin-McFarland's passion for the entertainment industry was cemented when she started visiting New York frequently as a teenager, including attending the MTV VMAs when she was 15. She soon quit regular high school for online community college courses, earning her high school diploma and associate's degree at the same time at the age of 16. She went on to graduate from the University of Texas at 19 and moved to New York to pursue modeling and freelance writing. As an agency model, she modeled for the beauty sector of the fashion industry for brands like Redken, Laura Mercier, hairstyle magazines, and Pepsi. She was a part time freelance writer for the American and international web and print editions of GQ, Men's Health, MadeMan, and others under her real name and noms de plum. At 21, she was The New York Daily News' youngest freelancer.

During much of her 20s, Russin-McFarland faced frequent and unpredictable diabetic complications, which delayed her plans for a career in film and music, including constant nausea and sporadic bouts of temporary blindness. Despite her health problems, she continued to pursue her goals and released her first self-animated short film, "Pizza Delivery," on Amazon Prime and YouTube in July 2018. After that, she released several more short films on the two platforms, culminating in her first two animated feature films, "The Homework's Revenge: Esther in Wonderland" and the award winning "Miss Shaguna's Chickens," which were released at the end of 2021. Russin-McFarland continued with more no-budget animated and live action films as she studied special effects and art distance courses with Stan Winston School.

In July 2021, AWAL signed Russin-McFarland into a music distribution agreement for her film score, classical crossover, and contemporary music releases. She has additionally scored work for film and television production music libraries and trailer music.

Russin-McFarland is working on the early stages of her first major budget films.