Mark Mazur
“My Mom works as an associate Dean at a technical college and my Dad is a field specialist at an engineering company. My Dad grew up in Northern Wisconsin while my Mom hopped around when she was young. She even spent a few years in Brussels.”
“I went to Bay Port High School in Green Bay. There was about 1,500 people in my high school. It was a small suburb just north of Green Bay. Mostly made up of working class people, nearly all of which are die hard Packers fans.”
“I attended the University of Wisconsin - Oshkosh. It is a small state school about an hour south of Green Bay. The biggest draw was that they allowed their freshmen students to rent out equipment to make stuff. A lot of film schools require you to be a junior or senior before being able to rent out equipment to make your own stuff. I studied Radio / TV / Film with a minor in business. I considered a few different minors and was a creative writing minor for a hot minute, but ultimately decided on business to give a different side to my bachelors degree. This decision helped me a few years later when I started a company with two friends after college.”
“I’ve wanted to be a filmmaker since I was 14 years old. I started a film company with my friends called White Smoke Films. We would produce our own original shorts and share with them with my high school. Eventually we got popular and distracting enough, for the school to ban my website. That’s when I started teaching my classmates about proxy servers!”
“My parents have always supported my creativity, but we definitely had conversations about if this was a real job once I was older. They always thought I would make a great lawyer. I have a certain affinity for arguing, in a civilized manor. I think once I started having some success and I was being paid to make commercials after my senior year of high school, they started to get on board with the idea.”
“When I was a growing up, my family would go camping a lot. My parents would always stay up later than my brother and I. My Dad used to sit by the camp fire with one of those two-way radios and tell stories to my brother and I. I think this helped form my imagination into what it is. Other influences have been the films of Christopher Nolan, David Fincher and Denis Villeneuve. I tend to watch a variety of stuff including older work and new thrillers. I’m also a sucker for sci-fi and space and spend too much time watching SpaceX launches.”
“After college I started my own production company with two friends. We moved to Minneapolis and began searching for work! I was working part time at Best Buy and then Apple and after about 9 months I was able to quit full time and work for my company. My first paying project was a short interview video for a Catholic Sober Home. Whilst working at Best Buy part time in the computer department, I started chatting with a guy who worked for the sober home and I told him I owned a production company. One thing led to another and he brought us on to shoot an interview and edit it.”
“In March, 2019 my fiancé and I decided to leave Minneapolis and move to Los Angeles, California to further my career in entertainment. I am working in LA as a writer / director. The goal is to direct my first feature film within the next couple of years. This move across the country has been a huge shift. I feel a creative energy out here in LA that I haven’t felt anywhere else. It’s equally inspiring and terrifying. When we made the decision to move, we knew it was a risk. We are fortunate enough that my fiancé can work remotely for her company. Regardless of how things turn out, it’s an adventure that she and I went on together. I couldn’t be happier.”
“My ultimate goal I want to write and direct original films and continue to do commercials on the side. I love the process of collaborating and creating. As a lover of video games, I also think it’d be great to play in that medium.”