Author: marksparadise

Created a new LinkedIn account and updated all my past work history. Been a long time coming. Give it a peek, add me, write me an endorsement or if you feel like being critical, give me some feedback. The list of social media keeps on growing!!

Check it out!

It’s been two years and I haven’t updated my website…what gives? Well here’s the short of it.

I’ve been EXTREMELY busy with DPAN.tv. Two years ago we launched the FIRST online TV network website dedicated to providing accessible content in American Sign Language, Voice-over, and captioning. What started as a small team of 5 of us grew into a 32+ person operation with staff all throughout the country. My job duties continued to grow endlessly. Starting off as a Content Manager for the website trying to pull in webseries, short films, ASL music videos, and much more, my primary focus shifted into the Director and Associate Producer for DTV News which has been VERY time consuming. Ensuring daily news and information is delivered to our audiences on time, with correct information, unique, original, and ACCESSIBLE for the Deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers as well as audiences that may or may not know ASL is a lot of work. Our staff grew quickly to 32 and I oversaw every aspect from the story selections, script writing, all the way through filming, voice-over and captioning. It’s a tedious but imperative process. Along the way we also launched a new series which I helped produce, Tru-Biz, a Deaf related hollywood/entertainment news series.

In addition to overseeing these programs, I developed my own “character” and starred in my own short fun segments called “Facts of Life with Rex Turner”, helped produce “Between the Lines”, and helped make history with DPAN.tv by providing live interpretations for the 2016 Presidential Debates, AND the Superbowl halftime show. In mid 2015 I also flew out to LA to work alongside director Jules Dameron as her Assistant Director for the soon-to-be-released web series “Reverse Polarity”.  Alongside overseeing the staff and all these projects, I have also been overseeing production for multiple external clients for DPAN.

That’s just a brief synopsis of the past two years, not including international performances with Sean Forbes in London, numerous DJ gigs and other really cool highlights and achievements. It’s been A LOT of work, so I hope you can forgive me for a lack of website updates.

With all that being said – I’m currently working to renovate my website to reflect all my latest projects, jobs, highlights, and make this website more current. Til then, thanks for your patience as I work on getting my site up-to-date.

A video I shot with director Adrean Mangiardi last December is up for Gospel Music’s ‘Stellar Awards’ “Video of the Year”. The video is for The Rance Allen Group’s “Clap Your Hands (A Lil Bit Louder). This is an exciting nomination for the video, and we look forward to seeing the results.

Check out the video if you haven’t seen it yet.

*Edit: We did not win, but it was a honor for our video to be nominated for one of the Gospel Community’s biggest awards.

Added a few new photos in my photo gallery, a few recent shots from my travels as well as a few random things that have caught my eye. Here’s a few.

Renaissance Roof

Mill Neck Manor

Salvage One

Click here to see the rest of the photos

In this interview with D-PAN, I share how I got my start in music, some of my successes and challenges and more – check it out!

Click here see the full artist feature on the D-PAN website, 

Extremely proud to share this new music video I Assistant Directed alongside directors Adrean Mangiardi and Jules Dameron for D-PAN and AT&T. The video is for Walk The Moon’s newest single “Different Colors”. This video is part of AT&T’s “Feel The Music” campaign, in which we encourage Deaf, Hard-of-hearing and ASL users to create their own video of the song. The winners of the contest get a VIP meet and greet experience with the band.

We filmed this project in August 2015 in New York City. Ever since Walk the Moon (WTM) reached out to D-PAN prior to the release of “Shut Up and Dance” to pitch a video for the song, WTM was a band I kept my eye on. When AT&T and D-PAN were discussing songs to do for this campaign, WTM was a band we both had listed.

Fast forward to the shoot, it was an overall fun, stressful but amazing experience. Many of the talent we wanted involved with this project were just moving to New York to start rehearsals for “Spring Awakening” broadway play in NYC, so we reached out to Spring Awakening directors to see if we can work together. This helped solidify the location of the shoot. We also brought in a few past D-PAN performers such as Kriston Lee and Katelyn from D-PAN’s “Waiting on the World to Change” video that were nearby.

I was just getting back from LA a week and half prior working with Jules Dameron as the Assistant Director for a new TV series she created, and took the reins on coordinating this project. We had an overall crew of about 70 individuals, ranging from cast members, production team, and players from AT&T and the marketing team. The day of the shoot saw over 85 people on set, and it was my responsibility to communicate with everyone.  I’m quite proud of the work everyone put into it – definitely in my top three work experiences. I’m happy to see this project take a life, and can’t wait to see community created videos.

So if you’re an ASL user, whether you’re Deaf, hard-of-hearing, hearing, it doesn’t matter. Go check out the campaign page at feelthemusic.att.com, find out how to enter the contest, and make your own video for a chance to win a VIP meet and greet with Walk the Moon. But before you do…check out the video we made.