Eyeline Pictures, LLC was founded by Donald Rayne Mitchell in 2003 as a full-service production company. Mr. Mitchell is an Emmy® award winner and has directed television commercials, dramatic narrative, and documentary films for the past 26 years. Known for his work with real people, he is adept at interviewing and weaving together documentary-style stories in the editing room. His work in the realm of medical science is extensive, with a profound ability to grasp complex scientific information and translate it to a lay audience. Since 1995 he has directed and edited numerous long-format pieces utilized for entertainment, education, fundraising, and public relations purposes for health-care and non-profit organizations.
He directed, co-wrote and co-executive produced the feature-length documentary film, HILLEMAN – A Perilous Quest to Save the World’s Children about the greatest vaccine maker the world has ever known. HILLEMAN won Best Documentary at the SCINEMA International Film Festival in Australia, the Science Communication Award at the 10th International Science Film Festival of Athens, Greece, was selected as one of six films to tour the Northeastern U.S. with the 2016-17 Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation’s On Screen/In Person series, and won Audience Choice Best Documentary and Best Biography awards at the 2017 New Hope Film Festival. In October of 2017, HILLEMAN screened at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
In 2018, Mr. Mitchell produced/directed and edited several projects in Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo for USAID-sponsored initiatives around education and healthcare. Covering a variety of genres from instructional to documentary to dramatic narrative, each of the pieces was shot in languages of the region and subtitled in English and a variety of additional languages as well.
Mr. Mitchell is currently developing an historical drama about the global eradication of smallpox based on William H. Foege’s book, House on Fire (UC Press, 2011). The screenplay for House on Fire, which Mr. Mitchell co-wrote with Robert & James Goldberg, is a 2022 Page Turner Screenplay Awards Finalist. He is also co-producing and directing a feature length documentary film titled, Courting the Dream, about the 1973 Memphis State University Tiger basketball team and its impact on the city of Memphis in the wake of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.
In 2021, Mr. Mitchell won an Emmy® for his work as producer/editor on the Penn Medicine production, Miracle Baby: A Uterus Transplant Story. In addition he is the winner of three Philadelphia Independent Film/Video Subsidy Grants as well as the recipient of two honors from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts: an Individual Artist Grant and a Media Arts Fellowship. He attended Allegheny College where he earned a B.A. in English Language Arts and Literature.