Mark Connelly Wilson is an award winning composer and producer of music for radio, video games, short films, and television.  He is also a video producer, videographer, video editor, actor, magician and educator.

 

As an actor Mark has appeared in short films, computer games, and industrial videos, and has lent his singing voice to and appeared in several parody music videos.

 

Counting Crows Parody - (all vocals and instruments Mark Wilson) - has a cameo as the drummer in the video

 

Most recently he appeared in the first episode of the soon to be released web series “Once You Leave” produced by For Now Productions in Austin, Texas.

 

 

As a magician he has performed all over Texas for schools, parties, and corporate functions.  Since 2009 he has been performing on stage as “Merlin The Wise” at Sherwood Forest Faire, a renaissance festival located in McDade, Texas.  

 

 

 

As a composer he has worked in all forms of media and has composed and produced hundreds of cues in various styles of music.  While growing up  in Harlingen, Texas he got his start in music while attended Travis elementary, and then Harlingen High school where he played trombone in the concert, marching and jazz bands.  He began taking piano lessons in elementary school and studied guitar while in middle school.  After graduating high school, he attended Sam Houston State university, where he studied music theory while focusing on classical guitar and piano. While attending college he continued writing and recording original songs and performing original music with his college buddies as part of the progressive rock band “Loremaster” and occasionally performed as a solo and duo act, playing acoustic guitar and singing in pubs and restaurants. It was at Sam Houston State university that he got his first taste of video production, as he appeared several times as talent on the school‘s television station.

 

He began his true professional music career as a entertainer, singing and playing guitar and keyboards while performing in local country and western and rock bands, and then shortly thereafter began writing advertising jingles for local businesses while learning the basics of live sound, studio production, and recording while working at a local recording studio in Bryan Texas.

 

In the late 1980s Mark became well versed in the world of computers as a result of a deal involving the trade of his employers car for a Commodore 64 computer with a midi interface and sequencing software that changed his life forever.  What followed was an immersion into the world of computer based music production - at the time using hardware samplers, midi sequencing, and Atari computers.  Over the years he has stayed current in all things music technology related and is a subject matter expert and consultant on hard disk recording, PC and Macintosh based DAW workstations and other forms of desktop music production.

 

In the early 1990s the term multi-media was born and there was a boom in development of software titles for cd rom, so as a result of an ad placed in the Texas Film Commission guide and a sample music audition, Mark was hired by Austin, Texas software developer Human Code Inc’ as lead composer. His first title he scored “The Cartoon History of The Universe” featured over 500 different compositions and won a bronze New Media Invision award for best audio soundtrack.

 

Over the next ten years, until Human Code’s offices were finally closed when the dot - com crashes occurred, Mark continued to create music and audio for projects developed by Human Code Inc. for clients such as Discovery Multimedia, and Disney Interactive, eventually handling all audio and projects as audio director of the business to business division of the company. During this time he found that his duties included setting up and coordinating video and photo shoots from time to time, and he regularly handled casting and direction of talent and began doing some voice acting and on camera acting himself, as well as experimenting with video editing and compression technologies. He also used this time to add to his arsenal of instruments becoming proficient on drums and bass, along with beginning to learn the violin which he still studies to this date.

 

In the late 90s Mark began teaching MIDI music production part time at Austin Community College in addition to his other endeavors.  Currently he teaches the advanced MIDI course for the department of Commercial Music Management and he also teaches video editing and the introductory course in television production for the department of Radio, Television and Film as an Adjunct Professor for Austin Community College.

 

Mark has also scored numerous award winning short films - mostly the films of University of Texas graduate Bradley Jackson including “Playing Chicken” winner of Famecast.com’s online contest, and “Playland”, a top five finalist in the 2010 Doorpost Film Project’s online competition.  Most recently Mark scored the trailer and contributed music to Bradley’s first place winner and top film for the 2011 Doorpost Film Project’s competition - “The Man Who Never Cried”.

 

 

Mark has also contributed music to the Emmy award winning public television series “The Daytripper”.

 

 

Mark has also worked as both video editor and music/audio producer for the soon to be released music literacy show “U Better Sing!”

 

 

Mark currently lives in the Austin Texas area and enjoys magic, acting, music, and film.