Barney is a multi-award-winning, international commercials director, working out of Ridley Scott Associates in London, NYC, LA and Hong Kong.

As writer/director he has made a number of shorts, including his live action 3D film The Foundling, which won the 2012 Lumière Award for Outstanding Achievement in 3D Short Film-Making.  (The other Lumière-winners that year were Wim Wenders, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese).

One reviewer described it as "like David Lynch meets David Fincher", while the Sunday Express's film critic called it "extremely impressive".  His BBC short Queen's Park Story was declared "The best British drama on television this year" by the Observer newspaper.

His shorts have been selected by festivals including Sundance, Venice, Toronto and Palm Springs Short Film Festival.

Barney is currently developing The Sound Sweep, a feature based on a cult short-story by the celebrated British author J.G. Ballard (Crash, Empire of the Sun, Highrise).  

He is also in final postproduction on ‘Night Dancing’ – a short film about love, obsession and delusion, with a strong contemporary dance element.

Barney’s commercials work reflects his talent for cinematic storytelling, emotive expression and authenticity.

"I'm drawn to projects where I get to both create cinematic impact and deliver something powerfully human", he says.  

"Spots like my Falling for Macmillan Cancer Support demand a credible execution – you can't mess around with a diagnosis scene, which so many people have real-world experience of, either directly or through loved-ones.  So you're on your mettle to make it ring true, which is a challenge I love.  At the same time, because there's a strong visual concept, I get to bring cinematic firepower to it too. So that's the ideal – a project with a human center and a story that can be told vividly."  

Barney has shot in excess of $50M-worth of commercials, working all over the world, for clients including Lexus, Volkswagen, Liberty Mutual, Peugeot, Toyota, Credit Suisse, and Yellow Pages.

Campaign Magazine named Falling one of the top 10 commercials of 2013, and it was honored at the 2014 AICE Awards. Barney's commercials for the National Health Service have won awards year on year, and his long-running 36-spot campaign for CIC Bank was recently voted number 4 in the top 10 of all French commercials.

Barney is an accomplished photographer and has been published by Taschen America.  His photographs are currently featured in an exhibition in Paris, and he frequently shoots stills campaigns alongside TV commercials (e.g. Roger Federer for Credit Suisse). A monograph will be published in 2017.

Barney lives in London, is a dual UK/US national and was educated at Oxford and Princeton.