La Libertad: When did you first start writing?
Mark Moran: Probably in the womb. I was very young.
La Libertad: What is the hardest part of of your job?
Mark Moran: I think it can be a challenge at times to limit my creativity to the bounds of a specific budget, but once I've taken an hour or two to knuckle down then I feel like I can accomplish anything within the budget. As a matter of fact, people in the business in Los Angeles are amazed that our period piece Blast and Whisper was shot, edited, and secured distribution worldwide on a budget significantly less than a million dollars.
From end to end, from development to securing distribution, the entire
process calls for perseverance, intensity of involvement, meticulous
detail, insistance upon quality, and the ability to work with teams of
highly intelligent people. I can't single out one particular link in
the chain, because without them all, there would be no motion picture.La Libertad: What has been your favorite project so far?
Mark Moran: My favorite project is always the one I'm working on. I think it takes that kind of attitude to succeed in this business. We don't want to live in the past or the future, but put our all, and better our best, on what's right in front of us at the present time. Nose to the grindstone, yes, but it's a peculiarly exquisite nose facing a peculiarly awe-inspiring grindstone! :)
La Libertad: What are your current projects?
Mark Moran: Our main projects nowadays are twofold. First, we offer a solution for writers, screenwriters, and scribes whose project of any kind (documentary, infomercial, movie, pilot, commercial ad, etc.) is sitting right on the doorstep to getting greenlit for production but nothing seems to be happening. Second is Yard Sale 411, a reality television series in development which stars George Selby and Ellyn McLaughlin. I would like to speak directly to your readers about the first of these, our main project nowadays, the RED TO GREEN LIGHT SOLUTION:
Is your project ready ten times over to receive its greenlight? Is it scripted, is it polished, is it fine-tuned and chockful of pure magic? Is it optioned? In each of these cases, whether your project be an infomercial, a blockbuster, or a cash cow, the stepping stone between your project on paper and your project funded, greenlit, and in production could be as simple as a carefully coordinated sitdown, table READING of your script by actors or appropriate talent in a studio, presented on DVD so that you or power-that-be can show it to investors unenthused about reading the documents themselves.
Breadwin Productions introduces the solution, the stepping stone itself, to bridge the gap and turn a project brimming with potential to a greenlight! For a limited time, the four RED TO GREEN SOLUTION PACKAGES are available at half price:
RED TO GREEN SOLUTION BRONZE. Your script (max length: 40 pages) is read by competent talent, 4 or 5 actors who may play 2 or more roles, with their live reading recorded and mastered for audio distribution or CD. Projects can be from 1 minute in length to 40 minutes in length. REGULAR PRICE: $500. FOR LIMITED TIME: ONLY $250!
RED TO GREEN SOLUTION SILVER. Your script (max length: 90 pages) is read by competent talent, 6 or 7 actors who may play 2 or more roles, and shot in HD for DVD or web distribution as well as audio CD. Projects can be from 1 minute in length to 90 minutes in length. REGULAR PRICE: $950. FOR LIMITED TIME: ONLY $475!
RED TO GREEN SOLUTION GOLD. Your script (max length: 120 pages) is read by B-list and C-list actors, 8 or 9 in number (who may play 2 or more roles), with limited sound effects comparable to a radio broadcast, and shot in 2-camera HD which is edited. In addition to the DVD of the table reading included is a second DVD which covers Breadwin's detailed discussion and breakdown of the project emphasizing its positive aspects but also discussing its challenges, and written notes. REGULAR PRICE: $1,800. FOR LIMITED TIME: ONLY $900!
RED TO GREEN SOLUTION PLATINUM. Your script is shot in 2-camera HD by the best actors available, 10 - 12 in number (who except for the lead role may play 2 or more roles), with sound effects. Along with the DVD of the table reading, included is DVD 2 discussion of the project, DVD 3 offering a thoroughly researched business case for the project, and DVD 4 providing innovative insights and strategies into the telling of stories through productions on television, film, and stage. Also includes high-value freebies. REGULAR PRICE: $2,500. FOR LIMITED TIME: ONLY $1,250.
These amazing resources are available to you at the same time that you retain all righs to your script and other associated texts. NOTE: If you have in mind to direct the project yourself, the price is negotiable.
La Libertad: Any upcoming projects?
Mark Moran: In addition to Yard Sale 411 starring George Selby, who wrote the book on yard sales, and Ellyn McLaughlin, the warm and upbeat sidekick on their yard sale adventures, Breadwin Productions also has several projects in development, some of which have scripts attached. At this time we would rather keep these project under wraps, but we can say that among them is one science fiction feature, at least one period piece, and a family adventure comedy.
La Libertad: When and where were you born and raised?
Mark Moran: I am an Annapolis-born son of Naval Officers. Born in the 1960's, to be sure.
La Libertad: Who were your parents? Living? Deceased?
Mark Moran: Thank God my parents are both alive. My mother was a nurse, an Ensign in the Navy. My father was an officer, retiring as a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy. When they met, my mother wanted to know my dad's birthday. He told her, but she wouldn't believe him. After repeating the date to her, she demanded that he show her his driver's license. The driver's license showed the same date as what he told her. Turns out the two of them were born on the same day of the same year. My dad often likes to joke about how my mom is much older than him because the hour of her birth was slightly before his.
La Libertad: What were your parents' professions?
Mark Moran: My mother was a nurse for the Navy but with my birth she left the Navy (in fact it was policy at the time that if two officers married, one or the other was required to leave the Navy). After that, she became a homemaker. My Dad earned his PhD in mathematics from Notre Dame after serving as a Gunnery Officer aboard an aircraft carrier. For a time he taught at the Naval Academy. For the rest of his career he taught college mathematics at Radford University, retiring in recent years. Their main profession nowadays is taking care of their two dogs.
Mark Moran: Two siblings, a brother and a sister. Both alive. My brother is slightly younger than me. He is a civil engineer, the main engineer as I understand, for the town of Reidsville, North Carolina, where he has lived many years. My sister is the youngest of the three of us.
La Libertad: What are/were their professions?
Mark Moran: My sister's major in college was hotel and restaurant management. She started out as an intern for Disney World (the one in Florida), then worked for Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. She eventually married her boss and settled down in Hunterstown, North Carolina just outside Charlotte. My brother studied civil engineering at Virginia Tech. When he and I were teenagers, our dad set up guitar lessons for him. When he chickened out, I stepped in and took the lessons in his place for a short time. When I was 15, I was amazed at the Abba song "SOS." In the Guinness book of world records the name of The Beatles kept showing up as the most popular musicians and composers in history. My brother earned money from a paper route and I talked him into buying the Red Album from The Beatles. Until that time neither of us took music seriously, but we were utterly blown away by the achievements of John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Soon after, I bought the Blue Album, and we started to take guitar seriously. In about a year, we took our original songs into Threshold Recording Studio in Roanoke, Virginia, and we both became lifelong musicians and composers. My brother studied the style of Chet Atkins and became an outstanding guitarist in that style. I later studied under Scott Smalley in Hollywood, one of the top orchestrators for Hollywood movies of all time (Batman, Men in Black, etc.)
La Libertad: What schools have you attended/received diplomas/degrees from?
Mark Moran: My bachelors in aerospace and ocean engineering was earned from Virginia Tech. Later I went to graduate school at the University of South Carolina and earned a masters in public health from Columbia. At the same time, I studied on a more informal basis music, guitar, and orchestration. As I mentioned, I studied under the legendary orchestrator Scott Smalley in Los Angeles.
La Libertad: What awards have you received?
Mark Moran: I was a winner of the Space Shuttle Student Involvement Project, which flew me to NASA Langley out near Hampton, Virginia. Had this project won the national competition (mine was a U.S. regional winner) it would have flown aboard the Space Shuttle. The Mars Society sponsored my participation in a manned Mars mission simulation, out in the southern Utah desert. TV Guide magazine, as explained in the question below, awarded to a production on which I was Unit Production Manager its best-of-kind designation. Also, I developed a card game, "Porcio", that was honored with publication in Games magazine. Later the rules of the game of Porcio were published in the world's largest online archive of card games, at http://www.pagat.com/invented/porcio.html. The book explaining this fascinating game can be purchased at http://www.amazon.com/000-Hands-Later-Mark-Moran/dp/1430312998.
La Libertad: What was your earliest employment?
Mark Moran: Interrupting a brief stint working for fast food, my first employment of any duration was as a Steamline Inspector for Haller Testing Labs working on site at the Radford Army Ammunition Plant. In some ways this was a spooky job, because every few years someone seems to have gotten blown into smithereens at the Hercules-run plant, which dealt with explosives, TNT, etc. Each building had a light on top similar to what you find on an ambulance. When it was lit and rotating it meant stay as far away as possible from the building because they were doing something with the explosives. The walls of each such building sloped inward so as to keep shrapnel from an explosion contained within as narrow as possible a cone. They had a buddy system, and two people would work in these facilities at a time. To reduce the likelihood of a spark, instead of electrical power distribution they instead used steamlines that stretched between a few hundred of these specialized buildings, spread apart across flat ground. My contract was to inspect the steamlines. Behind our inspection, wearing contamination suits, a team from another contract would renovate and deal with asbestos in certain places surrounding the pipes. I loved the job. Had a great time, and loved being out in the weather, rather than sitting at a desk.
La Libertad: Did you serve in the military? If so, in which conflicts?
Mark Moran: No, I never served in the military or any military conflicts. However, as I said both my parents were military and my very first long-term job was doing work in support of the military's ordnance production. Later, out of college with a B.S. in aerospace and ocean engineering from Virginia Tech, I worked as a contractor for the Naval Air Test Center at Patuxent River, often called just Pax River. I worked with Naval aviators and Marine pilots on V-22 and other weapon systems, helping work out flight test plans and debrief after the tests. I worked with a man who had only been disqualified from the astronaut program because he was an inch or two too tall. Several years later, Wyle Laboratories hired me to work in the Space Station Engineeering & Integration Contract (or SSEIC pronounced SEEK). Heading the entire contract was the one and only Fred Hayes, who had flown on Apollo 13. My boss's boss was another astronaut who flew around the moon and also flew the Space Shuttle in its early days, T. K. Mattingly. In the movie about the famous flight of Apollo 13, T. K. Mattingly is called Ken Mattingly. In real life, when I knew him, he went by Ken. He was actually a General, too. So for a long time I was either on the peripheries of the military or directly working with people like General Mattingly. These were exciting times for me, setting the groundwork for stories in feature films. My involvement in these scientific/engineering/technical projects continued into more recent years. A few years before the Blast and Whisper movie, Robert Zubrin, head of the Mars Society, assigned me to join a mission with the Mars Desert Research Station out in the desert in Utah a few hours from Salt Lake City. I got to test out space suit technology, served under a NASA physicist named Brent Bos, drilled into the desert using a gasoline-powered apparatus, and sampled for methanogenic gases which later were a major discovery, and also did a water quality experiment. My work on this project was published in the peer-reviewed journal ICARUS.
La Libertad: When did you first start writing?
Mark Moran: I was one of the youngest members of a college writers group, so I wrote from my youth. In college, in fact my freshman year, I wrote a book called Neither Here Nor There. At Virginia Tech was an alumni magazine called Engineers' Forum. I joined them as a staff copywriter. Later I was promoted to Assistant Editor and wrote everything from highly technical to science fiction stories. For me creativity was second nature, like life itself, breathing and imagination. God has blessed me with a huge treasure trove of story material, even such strange things as my being molested by a 40-something woman when I was just 11 years old.
La Libertad: What is your religion?
Mark Moran: I am a traditional Christian. What I mean by that, is my church was founded not by Martin Luther, nor John Calvin, nor Zwingli, but by Jesus Christ Himself in the flesh. If Jesus is God, as my faith teaches, His Church will never fail or teach error.
Mark Moran: I seek to honor the truth. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. He is the model and exemplar to follow, the summit and source of truth. When something emerged from truth, Jesus during His earthly life held fast to it even at the cost of His life. When something departed from truth, Jesus in His earthly life rejected it even if it meant overturning the money changers tables in the temple or condemning the Pharisees as hypocrites. This is the same model and example that I seek to follow. Is this conservative? Yes, for all truth. Is this anti-conservative? Yes, for all lies. So that's who I am or strive to be, politically. Call me what you like. I am not interested in his truth or her truth, your truth or mine -- only true truth, the one and only truth.
La Libertad: Where do you stand on abortion, and why?
Mark Moran: The modern high-definition ultrasound is exposing the lies of those who claim in vain that the fetus (the word is very old and literally means in Latin "child") is subhuman or deserving of less respect than the woman in whose womb she happens to be a passenger.
Women deserve better than abortion. Abortion, or the "choice" for abortion, is not about compassion toward women; choice in terms of abortion is about piling new problems, new despair, new agony, new guilt, upon what's already oppressing her.
Roe v. Wade is the worst and most unjust decision of the Supreme Court in the entire history of the United States. Roe v. Wade made mincemeat of the Constitution.
La Libertad: What, if anything, would you like to share with La Libertad, about your current spouse and/or previous spouse(s), offspring and descendants?
Mark Moran: I am married to a Chilean (now a nationalized U.S. citizen). She is my chili pepper. She and I have three biological children, a fourth who is adopted, and we had foster custody over a girl in need who went back to her native Mexico a decade ago. One of our children is a dean's list fine arts major, an illustration specialist, from Maryland Institute College of Art.
La Libertad: Where do you stand on immigration? What do you think of Obama's recent
granting of amnesty to certain illegal aliens?
Mark Moran: I am not happy with either side in the debates. As for Obama, he is the worst of the worst if you list out all the Presidents of the United States. He is rock bottom, so far. God forbid that he ever gets elected a second term.
La Libertad: Where do you stand on ObamaCare? What do you think of the recent Supreme Court ruling on its constitutionality?
Mark Moran: ObamaCare is a New York telephone directory size opus of pork and beans. It is a monumental mistake. It is the biggest tax increase in the history of the United States, a way not to fix but to break our health care system, and the most telling lie of Lord Obama's entire ruinous gangster administration.
La Libertad: What do you think of Eric Holder? Do you think he should resign?
Mark Moran: Eric Holder should resign, yes.
La Libertad: What do you think of Treyvon/Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman?
Mark Moran: I don't have all the facts and am not part of that case, so I am hopeful that the facts will speak for themselves and a just outcome will be reached. There is a huge amount of prejudice surrounding the case, which can't be good.
La Libertad: Where do you stand on gun control, and the castle doctrine and stand-your-ground laws?
Mark Moran: I believe in our Constitution and am apalled when people try to run circles around it, or circumvent it in any way -- except when people are willing to go through the immense process of amending the Constitution. I also believe that weapons should be in the hands of law-abiding citizens, and that the right to bear arms helps prevent unjust governments from taking the United States by force. Which brings up the biggest weakness of a representative constitutional republic: the possibility of citizens voluntarily turning the keys to the government over to irresponsible tyrants. Today is a scarey time to be alive.
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| Cast of Yard Sale 411 |
La Libertad: What are your thoughts on Israel and Islam?
Mark Moran: The Jewish people are the fathers of the Christian faith. I have great respect for them and consider all Christians to be "completed" Jews in the sense that the Messiah of Judaism has come. Christianity teaches that when Jesus returns again to this world, physically visible to all peoples in all places, at that time the Jews will finally recognize Him as their Messiah.
I respect Islam insofar as Muslims teach the religion of the God of Abraham. From that point forward, there are immense concerns of great depth. Individual Muslims vary a lot, just as people of other religions do. Psalm 14 is worth reading.
La Libertad: How did you get into writing, directing and producing scripts and films?
Mark Moran: In the 1990's my friend Brian Mason launched David Baldacci's career, a novelist who has ever since been on the top selling books lists from around the world, with multi-million dollar contracts with each of his works. Clint Eastwood shot the film version of one of David Baldacci's early books. But before Brian's instrumental role, Mr. Baldacci's screenplays were being shopped everywhere in the entertainment industry without the least sign of success. This achievement of Brian's inspired me to contrive a project that would channel my technical expertise into a creative project. I conceived "Statistics 101 CD-ROM" and wrote the script for it, enlisting a team of creative and technically savvy folks at IDI, Inc. out of Manassas. It was great fun but IDI worked without compensation on the project, and when a Post Office contract of theirs, the bread and butter of their company, lapsed unexpectedly or was suspended, the folks at IDI in turn were forced to stop our project. Later, I took a course in screenwriting taught by Sondra Ghoravi and started turning out scripts. At this time Hollywood producer Marc Zicree (Magic Time, Twilight Zone, ST:NG, etc) called me and invited me to serve on the set of World Enough and Time being shot in the Adirondacks, starring A-list actor George Takei. During that production I worked closely with top Hollywood cast and crew, including Emmy winners, learning the ropes, and got promoted to Unit Production Manager. I actually got them the cameras they used for that particular production (the ones used in the Adirondacks). Later, TV Guide magazine declared the production the best of its kind! So this was really my first entertainment business award. During this period, I also pursued my music and took a film orchestration course taught by the world famous Scott Smalley (orchestrator of such films as Batman and Men in Black, among many others). In 2007, Brian and I bit the bullet and together founded Breadwin Productions LLC in Northern Virginia. Our first project would be a period piece based on the Bible, a film short called Blast and Whisper. The Assistant Director from World Enough and Time, Brian McCue, agreed to serve as the director. He and I spent a number of trips scouting for location(s). Then Mr. McCue married his wife, and his schedule went through contortions even as we worked out details for casting and a cave location. Lurray Caverns originally agreed to host the production, which was about Elijah in the cave described in the bible where hell so to speak breaks out, until they somehow decided that they couldn't have their cave scare people away -- and dropped us. While I secured the backup cave, Brian McCue was dropped from the project because of his schedule and I became director by default. My first visit to the cave in the depths of a forest caused me to fall ill with bronchitis from spores. This was just a couple weeks before filming would start. I recovered, and about this time I found Libertad Green to fill the co-star role of Jezebel, or "Jazz" along with Mehran Haq as Elijah. But Blast and Whisper at this time was still just meant to be a film short, not a feature film. We didn't think we had the money to underwrite an entire feature film. As we started the production itself, a bad cough started to come back to me. On the set, I would cough and soon be unable to breathe. This made every little action as director an ordeal for me. When we wrapped the principal photography for the film short, my coughs reached the point where I was losing consciousness and spent a night in the hospital. Fast forward to the beginning of 2008, as we meticulously went over our footage and started to edit, it became clear that if we used most or all the film short footage we could continue the story and turn the project into a much more lucrative feature film, instead of just an unsellable film short. After a second principal photography at Doukenie Winery in 2008 and a long string of pickup shoots continuing into 2009, we finally completed post production in 2010. In 2011, the movie got picked up by Celebrity Video Distribution in Los Angeles, and after shooting The Making of Blast and Whisper in Los Angeles, the rest is history -- for Blast and Whisper.
La Libertad: Where have you traveled?
Mark Moran: I have travelled to many states in the United States, living as far west as California and as far east as Annapolis, Maryland. I have been to Boston a couple times. I have been to Canada three times, including Toronto where I toured sound stages used by many Hollywood productions. Also I have been to South America, Panama, Peru, Argentina, and (more than the rest combined) Chile. My goal is to shoot a film about the life of William Shakespeare in England and Europe. No, the Europe part is no typo for that project.
La Libertad: What languages do you speak, read and write?
Mark Moran: In addition to English, I speak, read, and write Spanish although imperfectly. I also took three years of French in high school, but my lack of practice with it has dulled my skills to the point where I'm probably quite dangerous with French. I remember when Pope John Paul II was shot, my French teacher implied that he must have died. Thank God she was very wrong about that. Years later, I went to New Orleans to see the same Pope. While waiting for him, rains were pouring like you would never believe, and the crowds were nothing but a sea of umbrellas. Within moments of John Paul II's arrival, the rains completely ceased. It was incredible. Recently I heard a commentator on the radio state that Obama could make the rain stop. Turns out the rain stopped *AFTER* Mr. Obama left, which, if you think about it, could mean something quite opposite from what that commentator and Mr. Obama's supporters take it to mean.
Mark Moran: I produced Statistics 101 as my first project of that scale, back in the late 1990's. A few years after September 11th, I was below-the-line (the "top" of below-the-line, to be sure) for the A-list production World Enough and Time, co-written by Marc Zicree and Michael Reeves (one of the head writers from Batman: The Animated Series). Then Blast and Whisper, starring Mehran Haq and Libertad Green, which I wrote and directed, was my third film-scale project.
www.BREADWIN.com
http://tech.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/mars-chicago/message/2026
Interview by William M. Vaughan and Libertad Green
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