Mark Baird

Born in Dallas, Texas and raised in the rural west Texas town of Coleman, Mark's passion for film making did not ignite until mid way through his college career. After trying his hand at electrical engineering, computer science, and even religious studies, he found his passion in the Radio/TV department of Howard Payne University. After completing his undergraduate work he moved on to graduate film studies at Baylor University in Waco where he earned a master of arts degree in film. During his graduate school years, Mark worked on five feature films under the mentoring of Alan Stewart, and alongside classmate Frank Patterson acquiring experience as a writer, editor, and 1st AC. After graduation he briefly taught at Howard Payne, Shot commercials for KJTV Productions in Lubbock, and worked as a broadcast manager for DeWall, Pollei and Cowley advertising in Waco. Through all of this time, Mark also maintained a freelance career shooting 16mm film for commercial and industrial clients. In 1997 Mark made the move to Houston after accepting a position at NASA's Johnson Space center as a television producer. Within a few years at NASA mark moved over to the television engineering side of the house and earned his Avid ACSR certifications in Editor, Unity, and Interplay. At the end of the shuttle program in 2011, Mark left NASA to pursue his passion for narrative film. Since leaving NASA Marks work has centered around faith based short films, many of which have premiered at the 168 Film Project's annual festival in Los Angeles. He founded the Houston based "Films for Actors" project which strives to help young actors realize their dreams by providing parts in 'festival quality' films to actors needing experience and demo reel material. In 2014, his short film "Gift of Grace" AKA Born Dead: A Zombie Parable won the "KidVid" category of the 168 festival and went on to be picked up for international distribution and translation into multiple languages. In 2017 Mark served as Festival Director for the 15th annual 168 Film Festival in Los Angeles. In 2018 he started a festival near Austin, and will curate a night of short films in Houston in 2019. He also continues making his own films. Mark is also associated with Second Chance Pictures of Houston, developing feature film projects. Mark has three children, Daya, Dani, and Dara. He now lives near Austin and still produces most of his films in Texas.