Mark Arellano Plus
Filmmaking has been in my blood since my 1980s childhood, when I first hoisted a VHS camcorder over my shoulder and made James Bond movies with friends in my Bay Area backyard. In the 90s, seeking inspiration, I drifted from Santa Barbara to UC Davis, then Nashville, Austin, New York, Seattle, Vancouver and Toronto before finally surrendering to the inevitability of Los Angeles. There I paid my dues with tours of duty at UCLA’s film school (production track), Miramax (in production and development), NBC (at ‘Saved By the Bell’ and LL Cool J's ‘In The House’) and the Slamdance Film Festival (doing festival coordination in Park City and Cannes). In the early 00s, my wife and I made a pilgrimage to India and shortly thereafter decided to move to San Francisco and start Conscious Creative, a multimedia creative agency dedicated to sustainability. There, I progressively started offering my services as an editor, followed by a camera operator, a cinematographer, and then finally as a writer/director. Over the years, I’ve been involved in shorts and features, narratives and documentaries, and everything in between.
I still enjoy making movies with friends, and I aim to one day make an actual Bond film with them.