Keith Rose

Keith Norval Rose was born in Johannesburg, South Africa on March 24, 1955, the son of gold miner Dennis Bomber Rozsavolgyi and his wife Rita Louise Dupont. Rose was raised on West Rand Consolidated Mines in Krugersdorp, which are home to the deepest and, despite today's rocky prices, some of the richest gold mines in the world. .

Rose graduated Randfontein High School in 1973, and the next year, he served in the South African Army; that same year, Barbara Osterloh and Keith had a baby girl named Kerry.

In 1975, after he left the military, Keith took up his father's business and began working as a gold miner. He also studied for a ventilation certificate, and worked in Randfontein, Carletonville, and Westonaria. While working at Carltonville Gold Mine, he noticed a live broadcast of the Nasa space odyssey playing in the window of Bradlows Furniture Store, and decided to take up a career in television.

After his father died in 1976, Rose began his career at the SABC as a sound technician, but he quickly gravitated to cameraman, which was his first love.

In 1977, he began freelancing and spent several years traveling abroad and working on feature films.

In 1980, he switched to commercials where his technical expertise and superb talent of visualizing and manipulating concepts put him in the directors' chair.

Rose was associated with many great commercials, from the mid-1980s Volkswagen campaigns of O&M's Brian Searle-Tripp to BMW advertisements featuring John Hunt.

In 1987, he started Velocity Films, and rose to the top worldwide. Keith was named as one of the '100 top creative minds of all time'. Rose had worked with most major international agencies on location in North America, Europe, and the Far East and won many awards, including five Gold Lions at Cannes.

Rose co-founded Velocity Films in 1990 with Barry Munchick, who came to Johannesburg because it offered excitement. Rose shot the Chapman's Peak advertisement for Willie Sonnenberg. Anticipating failure, Rose bought five cheap on-board cameras, three of which worked; Rose's anticipation paid off, as the first day of shooting, a Mercedes Benz had plunged over a cliff and the onboard camera had failed. Rose has also worked on a Lindsay Smithers advertisement for Toyota, a soap box ride on a mine dump in Krugersdorp using barefoot kids cast off the street from the rough end of town.

Rose met his precious wife Marie-Louise Brown in 1997 and instantaneously became a father figure to his stepson Roland.

Keith and Marie-Louise's first son Sean was born in January 1999, and their second son Luke was born in August 2000.

In 2000, Rose was admitted to South African advertising's Hall of Fame.