Optics

Mark took his first steps into filmmaking when he was at Lancaster University between 1997 and 2000, studying Politics! Mark had been writing stories since a young age, but realised all his ideas were based on visual images, and so turned his attention to movie making and shot a film with his friends, No Fear (2000). After leaving University, Mark continued his writing, and made a series of short projects, including Mr Headman, Stand Up, music videos and an experimental micro-budget feature film, Screaming Out Silently (2001). These all provided valuable learning and developed his skills and knowledge. Mark followed this up with his second feature project, The Jigsaw of Life (2005), with a budget of £10k and a much bigger cast and crew. Mark drew an immense amount of knowledge from the experience, but then took some time to undertake training courses in writing, producing and other aspects of filmmaking. Mark put theory into practice in 2009 with a short film, Perception (2009), which premiered at the London Independent Film Festival in May 2010. This coincided with the shoot of Mark’s third feature, Harmony’s Requiem (2010). Mark had a hiatus from filmmaking following this project to focus on other activities in his life and in 2016 returned to filmmaking with a couple of short films, Spooky Staples (2016) and Electrifying (2017). Another break from filmmaking ensued as Mark completed an MBA at Warwick University. The UK lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic then provided Mark with an opportunity to try some green screen shooting and he made two short films, Chopanoc Investigators and the Crystal of Life (2020) and The Chrysalis Children (2020), both of which premiered at the Quarantine International Film Festival. Mark them shot a speculative pilot episode for a TV show, Pincer: A Demon in the Red Mist (2020). At the beginning of 2021, Mark decided the time was right to make his fourth feature film, into which he could embed all his learning and experience to date. Writing started in January 2021, production ran for three months from March to May, the edit took place over the summer and the film was completed in October 2021. Mark now plans to submit Optics (2021) into film festivals in the UK and Internationally, and has started writing his next project.