Mark Ward

Mark Edward Ward was born and raised in Toms River, NJ, to James Ward, a Catholic missionary, and Carmencita dela Cruz, a Filipino folk dancer. At age 3, Mark's security blanket was a VHS of Commando recorded off HBO. An upbringing of movies, video games, and comic books instilled an early grasp of visual storytelling. Plans to become a doctor or lawyer evaporated in middle school upon watching Pulp Fiction. Mark convinced his teachers to let him submit videos for every assignment. Shorts such as Everything You Wanted to Know About Jesus (But Were Too Afraid to Ask) and Jane Eyre 2: Janie's Got a Gun both received perfect grades and were also banned from school grounds. Mark then embarked on a ten-year music career. He took every opportunity to keep making movies, directing music videos and vlogs, and developed skills in photography and graphic design creating album layouts and websites which also introduced him to the promotion and distribution arms of the entertainment industry. The day he retired from music in 2010, Mark founded Garden State Productions, an independent film production house. Early shorts such as Buzzed (2010) and Thirty-Six Seven-Tens (2011) attracted early attention. Jiu-Jitsu 101 (2014) garnered over 70 million views across social media within a year. In 2015, Mark and co-writer/co-producer, Shannon Meehan, completed a feature screenplay, Cloudwatchers, that earned Official Selection status at the 2015 Garden State Film Festival, Female Eye Film Festival, and a spot at the CineStory Foundation's fellowship program. Their feature script, The Best Version of You, was an Official Selection at over 20 festivals, earned them a return trip to Female Eye where it won the Best Fresh Voice screenplay award, won Best Feature Screenplay at the New York International Screenplay Awards among others, and made quarterfinals and semifinals at ScreenCraft, CineStory, the Creative World Awards, and the PAGE Awards. A camera and lighting test for The Best Version of You became the short film, Masters (2019), shot in six hours for zero dollars, and was accepted into dozens of film festivals with a 41% selection rate including Savannah Film Festival, Sedona International Film Festival, Woods Hole Film Festival, SENE Film Festival, and many more top-tier festivals around the world, winning a number of awards. A proof-of-concept short film for The Best Version of You, 3:5U (2021) is in post-production. The Best Version of You (2022) is in pre-production with principal photography scheduled to begin in 2021.