You might not know the name Bryan Buckley, but you definitely know his work. In the past decade, Buckley has directed over 40 Super Bowl commercials, including the Best Buy ad with Justin Bieber and Ozzy Osbourne from 2011, and most recently, the hit spot starring Amy Poehler from this year's Super Bowl.

But after a trip to Africa in 2010, Buckley's career took a turn when he decided to write and direct a short film about a child fisherman in Somalia, using an all-Somali cast of refugees from that country's civil war. The film that resulted, ASAD, won the narrative short competition at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival and went on to be nominated for an Oscar in the Best Live Action Short category. Look for Buckley (and, hopefully, ASAD's stars Harun and Ali) at Sunday's Academy Awards, and fingers crossed that he wins (The Awl calls ASAD "a slam-dunk" to win, so there's that.)

In the first of Tribeca's Prequel series, where filmmakers share their backstories and filmmaking journeys, the affable Buckley tells us how he went from poor student to college cartoonist to the New York Times' "advertising's upstart" to Super Bowl King to Oscar-nominated filmmaker, and talks about the challenges and rewards of making ASAD, which is now available on iTunes.

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