FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Mark Sawicki was born and raised in Jackson, Michigan where he developed a love of entertainment studies. As a student he pursued the arts through theatre, craft shows and a hobby of stop motion animation. His constant experimenting with animation proved promising enough to let him be accepted at the prestigious USC Cinema department. While at USC, Mark's student film "ORIGINS" garnered a Silver Hugo and the much coveted Silver Eagle.
Mark
also won a Kodak Teenage Filmmaker award in 1972
It was a very opportune time when Mark left USC in that Hollywood was is a period of grand resurgence. Star Wars had just been released and many animators found gainful employment in feature films creating visual effects.
The late 70s was an exciting time to be in the film business. Mark was involved in it all. When he left school, he and his chums made a 16mm feature horror film called "The Strangeness" which Mark acted in as well as doing the visual effects. From there Mark graduated to working as an effects cameraman for Roger Corman on some of the many spin offs of the Star Wars craze. "These were great times for my generation of movie artists." "We were young and did crazy creative things doing long hours for poor pay in dark moldy stages but we were finally making movies for the big screen!" "This was a very happy time in my life", says Mark.
A Judas Priest
Biomechadroid.
The 80s brought in the world of commercials, clay animation and MTV. Once again Mark found employment as an effects cameraman and obtained a Clio for his efforts on "Space Rock", a nationally syndicated commercial. His animation work came to the forefront as he had the chance to work with Wayne Isham on the then controversial Judas Priest videos "I'm your Turbo Lover" and "Locked In". "It was amusing to see my little animated biomechadroids on the news as an example of media corrupting youth" said Mark. "The videos were really very innocent". During the MTV heyday Mark landed several parts in rock videos where his acting was sometimes paired up with clay animation. In the video "Stop, Wake Up" he played a silly dancer that is transformed into a clay version of himself. "I remember my wife commenting on the sculpture I made of myself, she said it wasn't chubby enough. I guess I took poetic license". chuckled Mark.
Mark shooting a live action
element for a Matte painting.
The mid 80s Mark had hit the big time and became a Matte cameraman for
Illusion Arts where he photographed matte paintings for major motion pictures
such as "Star Trek"," Courage Under Fire", "Age of
Innocence", "Cape Fear" and many others.
"This was an amazing discipline in that the latent image photography
process required you to go to the actual movie set to photograph the actors then
take that film back to the effects studio to add in the painting on the same
piece of film. "You could not make a mistake because the set would be
struck and the star would be gone, you could not go back". said Mark.
The process is illustrated in the TV show Movie Magic where Mark is featured
explaining the process as used in "The Addams Family".
A
cartoon gift for Doris Kochanek of The National Film Board of Canada
The 90s ushered in the digital age and Hollywood went into a scramble to retool. Mark joined Kodak to assist in training their clients on the new digital compositing tool Cineon. Through Kodak Mark trained new digital artists throughout Los Angeles and traveled to London to teach at Kodak's Cinesite. Mark also taught at the National Film Board of Canada.
In 1996 Mark took on the biggest challenge of his career and became one of the effects supervisors for the landmark television event "From the Earth to the Moon" where he worked with Area 51 to create effects for the Tom Hanks directed opening episode. "It was a great experience to work with Tom Hanks and to also meet Dave Scott who was one of the astronauts that actually walked on the moon. I remember walking on the moon set and seeing the Lunar Module set piece and I went back to being 12 years old and for a flash of an instant I was on the moon of my childhood fantasies." recalled Mark.
Mark evaluating a film effect at Custom Film.
Today, Mark spends his time doing optical camera work and digital shots for Custom Film Effects. His work can be seen in many Oscar nominated pictures such as "Gangs of New York", "About Schmidt" and "Far From Heaven". Mark also continues to teach for UCLA extension where his class "Gateway to Digital Effects" has been a perennial favorite for over a decade. Reaching out to a broader audience Mark has begun authoring instructional videos that are being distributed globally. He also continues to create and sell cartoon sculptures to private collectors.
Vladek Savitskus
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