Martin Gooch

Martin Gooch was born in St. Albans, England. In 1992, at the age of 19 he went to Modoc County, California to work with the US Forest Service, as an archaeological assistant, which gave him a great love of the outdoors. He graduated from Christ Church College Canterbury in 1995 with a Joint Honours in Radio, Film &TV with Fine Art. Martin then worked in London as a 1st and 2nd AC on many short and feature films as well as TV for many of Britain's leading production companies, including the BBC. After writing and directing several award-winning short films, including The Orgasm Raygun and Arthur's Amazing Things, which was a winner with BBC New Talent in 2001, Martin was offered Doctors (BBC) to direct, and one of his episodes won used by ITV Soap Awards for the best onscreen chemistry award (2007). Martin went on to Direct Hollyoaks and the BAFTA winning and EMMY nominated Spooks Interactive Martin made his feature-directing debut in 2011 with the mysterious comedy 'Death' starring Paul Freeman, Claira Watson Parr and comedy legend Leslie Phillips, which went on to win numerous awards including Best Director and the Audience Award at the 2012 Bram Stoker Film Festival. His second film 'The Search For Simon' (2013) stars Sophie Aldred, Carol Cleveland, Noeleen Comiskey and Martin in the lead role. It picked up numerous awards including best film at the Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival The Gatehouse, his third indie picked up distribution from Lionsgate and won best film at the London Independent Film Festival 2016. In 2017 25 years after his first visit, Martin returned to Modoc, California to shoot his fourth feature film Black Flowers. Which was filmed on location in Montana and North California. It had it's world premiere at Sitges International Film Festival in 2018 and won Best Sci-Fi Director at World Fest-Houston. In 2018 Martin was a winner with the Trinity Challenge backed by ARRI Media and Directors UK and wrote and directed the one-shot short film A Midwinter Night's Dream, filmed all in one shot using the ARRI Trinity Stabilisation system. Martin has a Masters degree in screenwriting from The University of the Arts London, and is working on a TV series based on the legendary Fighting Fantasy gamebook series with original creator Ian Livingstone. He currently lives in London, England