Steve Urbano
Partner | Director
Impossible
Denver
Steve Urbano is an award-winning live-action director who approaches storytelling like a race car driver approaches the track. Combining precise planning techniques with a willingness to push the boundaries of performance during production, he elicits emotion from his filmmaking with a sense of visual storytelling.
It is this unique talent that Urbano brings to his role as Partner/Director of Impossible, a Denver-based broadcast agency and creative production company. Since 2002, he has helped strengthen and build Impossible’s client base, directing commercials, network promos and documentaries for such iconic brands as Discovery Channel, DISH Network, Pepsi, Ford, Dupont, HGTV, Food Network and The Sundance Channel. Urbano has worked with such notable artists and celebrities as Smokey Robinson, Jeff Gordon, Bobby Flay, Giada DeLaurentis, Blair Underwood, Mario Andretti and Patrick Dempsey, among others.
His creative work has garnered him national credits and honors, including Clio Awards, National Addys and numerous EMMYs. Urbano has also been honored by the New York Festival for Advertising, the Broadcast Design Association and the Art Director’s Club of Denver.
An artist at a young age, Steve Urbano comes from a legacy of television and film professionals. He was mentored by his grandfather, Carl Urbano, a pioneer of animation’s Golden Age, who directed such beloved characters as The Flintstones and The Jetsons. Steve, who started working in advertising at 17, began his unlikely directing career as a graphic designer and art director. This creative path eventually led him to motion design and computer animation.
Steve met Impossible founder Joel Pilger in 1995, when the two worked together on several animation projects for Urbano’s then Atomic Pictures. In the ensuing years, it became clear that the two embraced a similar work ethic and vision, yet also complemented each other with a yin-and-yang balance. Their partnership was a natural progression, and the rest is history.
When not behind the camera, he enjoys two of his passions, scuba diving and auto racing. The owner of two race cars in which he competes both regionally and nationally, Urbano was named the 2011 Formula Rookie of the Year by Rocky Mountain Vintage Racing and often races for charitable causes.