Mark McLaughlin

Mark McLaughlin's career was nearly cut short... It happened after he directed a dangerous stunt shot. In the one-take scene, a 12-year-old boy rode his bicycle at high speed onto a ramp and into the air, jumping over five children laying on the ground just a couple of feet beneath him. He cleared them all... by inches. When the kid's mother saw the "dailies," she went nuts and immediately confiscated all of the production equipment, which consisted of a super 8-movie camera and, well, that's it. There was nothing Mark could do. After all he was only twelve himself, it was his friend's camera and -oh yeah- his friend's little brothers and sisters were under the ramp. Even against such odds, Mark continued to make films and videos. Recently he has been writing and producing original programming for the Documentary Channel, was Unit Production Manager on an action movie, created a retrospective on Hollywood Musicals for PBS and a wrote a special on the Student Academy Awards for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Before that, he produced a feature documentary about Superman for Warner Brothers as well as produced and shot Fox Movie Channel's tribute to Shirley Temple fans, "Shirleymania." He spent a couple of months living in a tent at the North Pole while producing "Surviving Mars" for the Discovery Channel, and he hung out with an 80-year-old ex-stripper at the Burlesque Hall of Fame while producing "Rewind America." His independent feature documentary, "Keepers of the Frame," has been shown at dozens of major film festivals and on AMC (American Movie Classics). Before that, Mark was responsible for the television advertising of Water World, a large theme park in Colorado. He directed several award-winning commercials for the park. As a freelance film sound technician, Mark has worked on commercials, television and feature films and earned a national Emmy nomination. Mark has traveled the world working on programs such as "Nova," "Scientific American Frontiers" and many more.