- Born
- Mark Archer grew up in the small city of Fort Wayne, Indiana. He started producing and directing industrial and documentary videos at a very young age. He was accepted into Purdue University's Engineering program, but turned it down to form his production company. He subsequently did work for national medical, automotive, retail and government clients. His involvement with the Stop the Madness Foundation, a youth anti-violence group, came about soon after as he created a national media campaign which included public service announcements featuring re-enactments of shootings and murders. Archer's film education was mostly self-taught; however, he credits Dov Simens of the Hollywood Film Institute as being his mentor and turning his film career around.
Archer produced In the Company of Men (1997) in the summer of 1996 for $25,000. Mortgaging everything he had to get the film to completion, he suffered great personal losses during the production. After the film went on to win the Filmmaker's Trophy at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival, Archer skyrocketed to fame in the independent film community. In 1998 he completed American Reel (2003), which he directed and co-produced.- IMDb Mini Biography By: A. Nonymous - Mark Archer is a multiple award-winning commercial Director/DP, Producer, Writer and Editor. He is also President/CEO of New Hollywood Studios, a commercial production and post-production company he founded after he first gained notoriety in the motion picture industry with his first feature motion picture production, "In the Company of Men". He partnered with writer/director Neil Labute to produce the film for the paltry sum of only twenty five thousand dollars. Six months later, the film would go on to win the Filmmaker's Trophy at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival. A few months after that, Sony Pictures Classics would purchase the film and release it to worldwide critical acclaim, bringing in over $20 million dollars at the U.S. box office alone. The film also launched the careers of Aaron Eckhart ("Erin Brockovich", "The Dark Knight"), Matt Malloy ("Armageddon", "Law and Order") and Stacy Edwards ("Chicago Hope", "Driven").
Following the success of his first film, he directed David Carradine, Michael Maloney and Mariel Hemingway in "American Reel", marking the first time David Carradine had performed original music for a film since "Bound for Glory". After that film, he turned his focus to building a successful commercial production and post-production company, New Hollywood Studios, and continued producing and directing a wide array of productions, including music videos, live concerts, network TV pilots, international documentaries and television commercials.
In a career that has spanned over 25 years, he and his films have won or been nominated for over two dozen different awards worldwide, including Sundance, Cannes, Deauville, the New York Film Critics, Chicago Film Critics and the IFC Independent Spirit Awards, for which Mark was nominated for "Best First Feature" with actor Samuel L. Jackson. His cinematography has also been featured in American Cinematographer Magazine, and he has lectured at film festivals and universities nationwide on filmmaking, marketing and feature film financing.- IMDb Mini Biography By: www.markarcher.blog
- SpouseAmber Archer(2008 - present) (3 children)
- Archer edited the original 'rough cut' of "In the Company of Men" with Cinematographer Tony Hettinger in a make-shift edit suite put together by Archer with borrowed equipment. That 'rough cut' got the film accepted into the 1997 Sundance Film Festival.
- President, Mark Archer Films and Fearless Features, Inc.
- Produced the live concert DVD: "Joe Bonamassa: A New Day Yesterday Live". He ran out of camera operators at the last minute, so Archer ended up running the jib-arm camera for the entire concert himself.
- Was accepted into Purdue University to study Robotics, but opted to start his own production company and pursue filmmaking, instead.
- He is discussed in the book "From Reel to Deal" (2003, Dov S-S Simens, Warner Books) on page 5, for his production of "In the Company of Men".
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