Prior to pursuing his passion for technology; Mark spent much of his youth devoted to an even more challenging discipline -  the life of a full-time, professional magician. It turned out to be remarkably valuable training for his later endeavors. At the age of 15, Mark was one of the youngest magicians ever selected for membership in Hollywood's prestigious Magic Castle. He was soon performing at popular L.A. nightclubs as well as touring internationally with solo runs at hot spots such as the Marco Polo in Singapore and Juliana's in Bangkok - all prior to his 18th birthday.

While working professionally as a magician Mark purchased one of the first commercially available personal computers, featuring a decadent 4K bytes of memory. Unsure if he would ever be able to fill that much RAM, Mark taught himself assembly language programming and developing computer software quickly became a fascinating, all-consuming hobby. On his 21st birthday Mark made the fateful decision to exchange his career as a performer with his hobby of computer technology.

Hollywood Calls
Mark's first job after college was working as the sole engineer creating early computer animation software at a Hollywood television studio. After completing his first software product for the studio he began immersing himself in other aspects of the production process. Constant exposure to the creative power of television proved irresistible and, as his skills grew, Mark expanded beyond developing video tools to actually shooting, editing and directing local and then national television broadcasts, eventually winning several national awards as a video producer and director.

3D visual effect from Star Wars created with Electric Image

Play Incorporated
Walking down the red carpet at the Emmys proved to be a transformative experience. In 1994 Mark co-founded Play Incorporated, which he whimsically named after his favorite button on a VCR. Play was a self-funded start-up, whose first product, a video capture peripheral named Snappy, generated over $30 million in its first year. Snappy went on to sell over one million units and win 25 editorial awards including the industry's highest honor, PC Magazine's "Technical Excellence Award". Play's second product, Trinity, became the only product ever to sweep all five editorial awards for "Best of Show" at the industry's largest trade show, and the only product ever to win "Best of Comdex" twice. Play's 3D animation tool, Electric Image, created special effects for hundreds of movies and TV shows including Hollywood hits such as Titanic, Mission Impossible, Men in Black, The Mask, Star Trek: The Next Generation and over 800 shots for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Play was sold to Globalstreams in 2000.
 
Serious Magic
In 2001 Mark founded Serious Magic to create a new generation of software-based video and communication tools. With Mark serving as both CEO and product maven, the company developed its first software program, Visual Communicator. This product established a ground-breaking new interface paradigm putting powerful video production capabilities directly in the hands of business people and educators as well as empowering a new breed of communicator - video bloggers. Visual Communicator quickly became a best-seller, gaining distribution at CompUSA, Best Buy, Circuit City, Fry's and others, ultimately winning seven "Best of Year" awards including the coveted "Product of the Year" from PC Magazine.

Serious Magic's next product, ULTRA, revolutionized the chroma keying market with a stunning new approach to blue/green screen technology called Vector Keying. Vector Keying enabled keying effects to be done in previously impossible situations including poor quality or unevenly lit video footage. ULTRA was also the first product to bring the creative power of three dimensional virtual sets to regional, local and even indie producers with its breakthrough price point and unprecedented ease-of-use. At its unveiling, ULTRA won three "Best of Show" awards at the National Association of Broadcasters trade show (NAB), followed by rave reviews across the industry and two "Product of the Year" awards.

A year later, Serious Magic's DV Rack introduced another exciting and totally new idea to the video industry, "PC-Assisted Video Shooting". DV Rack (now called Adobe OnLocation) garnered three "Best of Show" awards at NAB and went on to win "Product of the Year" from four national publications. Serious Magic's final product Ovation, a real-time 3D presentation system, won "Product of the Year" from PC World Magazine and was honored as one of PC Magazine's "100 Best Products of 2006". At the end of 2006 Mark sold Serious Magic to Adobe where he's been asked to infect the world's second largest desktop software company with his unique brand of entrepreneurial energy and technology vision.

At Home
Mark and his wife Julia live near Sacramento where he spends his spare time composing symphonic music featuring more gusto than talent but which his friends pretend to enjoy anyway, playing lovingly restored retro arcade games, obsessively tweaking his home theater to attain minuscule increases in audiovisual quality perceptible only to certain marsupials and expanding his personal museum of classic console computers, currently the largest privately held collection in North America.