User:Pizzle/Mark Baker (Independant Director)



Mark Baker (Independent Director) new article content ...

(Marks background here)

Mark was born in Chippenham in Wiltshire and grew up in the town of (Royal) Wootton Bassett with his three brothers and three sisters. Mark was the youngest of the servern children. His father Frances (Franker)was a lorry driver and his mother Gladys was a homemaker and worked in the local shop. From when Mark was very young he always had a remarkable imagination and was telling stories to his class mates on his very 1st day of school. His Mother recounted that she went to go and pick him up after his 1st day at Primary school and saw he was sat on the table while all the other children were sat on the floor, this worried her, and wondered what mischief he had got into. When the class was dismissed, Marks mother asked the teacher if there was anything wrong and his teacher said that he had been sat there telling the other children this story that had all of them gripped, including her and applauded him for it and asked where he had learnt to do this. His mother was relieved but also baffled, as she didn't know he had this gift. He lived in Wootton Bassett until the age of 21. He then moved to Swindon town until he started backpacking around various countries around the globe. This gave him the maturity to understand many different cultures and languages. Mark did many jobs on his travels from working as a clerk in a hospital to being a nightclub DJ.

After his Father passed away in 1995, he went to Australia and New Zealand for a year and traveled and worked there. He fell in love with that side of the world. In the hope of one day returning to live there permanently.

Mark started working in the IT industry purely by accident but got promoted quickly due to his very quick adaptability to new technologies and problem solving traits. For over 15 years he has worked in all levels of support.

Survivors - The beginning

Mark is a avid film watcher and always wanted to make his own film, one of his bucket list. He wrote a basic story about 2 people that had a abusive side to it. After seeing a statistic that two people a week die in the UK and Wales die from domestic abuse, this pushed him to not only want to make this film but he MUST make it. No one else has ever made a film on domestic violence only theme. Mark knew nothing about "domestic abuse" and wanted the film to look rustic and real. So he contacted a local abuse charity and explained his idea, at first they were skeptical and thought he was wanting to make money from other peoples agony, but quickly realized that he was sincere and also offered all profits go to their charity. After interviewing many victims, his twenty minute film turned into an hour and could have extended it to ninety minutes easily but decided that he wanted to be faithful to the story and stuck to sixty minutes.

The Filming As this was a zero budget film, all the actors worked for free. Mark would provide refreshments for them but that was it. Mark, Jon and James did the camera work, Mark and Rose edited the film. Over the time of three months, they would film after work and at weekends. Three quarters through filming, Mark run some test audiences, these were mostly victims of abuse, if they liked it, he didn't really care if no one else did. He felt as these people actually went through this, they had to be the best judges for the film. The result was, they loved it. After many hours of filming, editing and adding the film score (By Jerry Turner)