About
My Name is Mark Gantt
I’m what you might call a late bloomer regarding my creativity. As a kid, when I was around seven or eight years old, a girl down the street and I created a neighborhood newspaper that we made using colored markers. We had a sports section, local news, and a lifestyle page. We spent hours every day after school drawing pictures and writing stories. It’s one of my fondest memories of that period. I loved taking a blank page and making it come to life. Then sports came along, and my desire to fit in with the cool kids won out, and my art was left behind.
It wouldn’t be until fifteen years later that I picked up a paintbrush and a camera. When I moved to Los Angeles in 1992 to work on movies, I met a Texan named James Brown. He was always creating and learning. He read books, knew all the best movies, painted (his walls adorned with his work), acted, and loved to make people laugh. He encouraged me to read, lending me Bukowski’s Women and Kerouac’s On The Road. One day I mentioned that I wanted to learn how to paint. He said, “Gantt, there’s nothing to learn. Just have fun…” He set up a canvas on a section of his wall, put a whole bunch of paints and brushes on a little table, and told me to play. That was just the beginning, and soon after, I bought a camera and started shooting things that moved me.
I’ve worked hard over the three decades to expand my creativity, including graphic design, acting, writing, and directing. I love telling stories with images and sharing my passion with the world. I appreciate the raw reality of everyday life, the fleeting beauty of those in-between moments, and I do my best to take every picture with that in mind. I want my viewers to relate to my photographs through recognition of and familiarity with the situations, the emotions, and the energy so much that they wonder if they are looking at a picture of someone they know.
THE PROFESSIONAL BIO
A multi-medium visual and performance artist, Mark Gantt integrates his talents as a filmmaker, painter, photographer, actor, and graphic artist into each production’s look and style. He utilizes technical expertise, a keen eye for detail, and a genuine love of storytelling to transform words from concepts into visual realities.
Whether he’s working on commercial or branded films, award-winning writer/director Mark is in the business of authentic, creative visual experiences. With a diverse, 30-year career in the industry, he has learned the business from the ground up and had the good fortune of collaborating with top directors, including Steven Soderbergh, David O. Russell, Sam Raimi, and Robert Rodriguez.
As one of the early pioneers of the digital era, Mark is best known for co-creating, writing, producing, and starring in Crackle’s groundbreaking Streamy award-winning series, The Bannen Way. Mark’s feature directorial debut, Murder In Mexico, was based on the actual events of Bruce Beresford-Redman, and premiered on Lifetime. Last year, he directed Model Citizen and The Surrogate, both premiered on Lifetime in 2020.
For two years running, Mark has created successful spots for ESPN and Nissan’s Heisman House campaign and popular and effective branded campaigns for GMC, AOL, Capital One, Kohl’s, Fox, and Lifetime.
As a writer, Mark’s upcoming Audible original true crime books, Injustice Collector and Contra Costa, both will be released in the summer of 2022. Mark also wrote two screenplays for The Cartel, Her Deadly Boyfriend and Deadly Infidelity, which premiered on Lifetime. He is currently pitching film and tv-series with his wife, actress, writer, and director, Brianne Davis. The two produce the popular personal journals podcast, Secret Life. They live in Los Angeles with their son Davis.