Colin Strause grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. Colin and his brother Greg Strause began experimenting with visual effects in their early teens. In 1995, he moved to Los Angeles and started working on the special effects for X Files: aux frontières du réel (1993). From there he moved on to big-budget hits such as Le professeur foldingue (1996), Volcano (1997), and the iceberg sequence of the Academy Award-winning Titanic (1997). He then broke into the music video and commercial arena, handling the special effects for artists such as U2, Britney Spears, and Aerosmith as well as spots for Nike, Jeep, and Pepsi. In 2000, Colin won a MTV Video Music Award for Best Art Direction for the Red Hot Chili Peppers' video, "Californication." This led him and Greg to start directing under the moniker "The Brothers Strause," and their Linkin Park clip "Crawling" was nominated for Best Direction and Best Rock Video at the 2001 VMAs. Other artists they have directed for include A Perfect Circle, Nickelback, Disturbed, and Staind.
Their visual effects company [Hydraulx] is at the forefront of the Industry delivering ground-breaking work on the blockbusters Les 4 fantastiques (2005), Terminator 3 - Le soulèvement des machines (2003), and Le jour d'après (2004).
The Brothers have recently directed spots for Coca Cola, Ford, The United States Marine Corps, Toyota, Universal Studios and Sony PlayStation's "God of War." Their latest music video for A Perfect Circle's "Passive" marked their second collaboration with the band. The video was shot almost entirely with thermal cameras and featured on the Constantine soundtrack and DVD.
