We recently connected with Mark Pedri and have shared our conversation below.

Mark, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I came up in a place that didn’t have a lot of opportunities to learn my craft. It was pre-YouTube and finding information on independent filmmaking usually meant going to bookstores when I traveled and experimenting with my own projects in my hometown in southwestern Wyoming. The first four years of making films was all about trial and error. I was primarily self taught, everything from troubleshooting how to log and capture using an under-specced computer, to trying to learn composition from looking at Life Magazine photographs. The lesson that I learned during this time that became the most valuable throughout my career wasn’t anything to do with any particular skill pertaining to filmmaking, but rather the skill of continuing to teach yourself every day. I finally made it to film school thinking that that would be the silver bullet to succeeding in the film industry. I quickly learned that the same problem I had back in Wyoming existed in the heart of Los Angeles. You can have the best instructors in the world, but your desire to learn is the most important thing. I’m grateful for the opportunities I’ve been given to study at some of the most prestigious, film schools in the world, but I’m also grateful that my first experience learning how to be a filmmaker was in Wyoming where I learned how to learn. A Wyoming upbringing plus a great film school community is my secret sauce.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am an independent documentary filmmaker and writer from Southwestern Wyoming. After spending a decade in Los Angeles working in Hollywood, I made the difficult decision to relocate back to Wyoming where am I currently based part-time and on the road the rest of the time. My partner, Carrie McCarthy and I now run the production company that I started the year I graduated high school. Back then it was a way to make it seem like the movies I was making were actually coming from a real company. Now, Burning Torch Productions is the overarching production company where we produce character based documentaries in Wyoming, across the US, and around the world. I’ve been a storyteller for as long as I can remember, and my medium has been visual images. My background in documentary filmmaking began with shooting alternative sports in the back country of Wyoming. I was always drawn towards interesting characters more than the spectacle of the sports. This led me to pursue an education in writing and storytelling. I made several films, but never quite broke through into the industry. I was always too eager to move on from a finished project to start the next, and I didn’t focus on maximizing the potential of each completed film. It wasn’t until my partner, Carrie McCarthy joined my company that making films became a full-time sustainable career. Carrie had a vision for using the films as tools for connecting people rather than just pieces of art or movies for a distributor’s library. Together we grew the distribution side of our company to focus on in-person events surrounding the themes of the stories we were telling. This was the biggest shift in my career because it opened up a new opportunity to not only make more compelling films on topics dear to me, but it also allowed for me to keep control of my own films in order to generate revenue through community engagement. We now focus our business on an audience-centered approach. We only make films that we believe our audience will benefit from. And if we don’t know our audience, we’ve already failed. Most of our projects involve long term relationships with the subject matter, and often personal themes. If a film we make doesn’t seem like the most important thing to us in that moment, then how can we expect anyone else to care? By keeping our promise to our audiences, our screenings and events are praised and described as much more than just a movie. That’s our core philosophy. We’re making more than just movies.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I was still living in Los Angeles and pitching several different projects. I was keeping my head above water, but none of the projects that I was pouring all of my passion into were taking off. Several of them were timely and I saw the window close over and over. This is when I decided that I was going to focus on projects that I could start the first step today. While I still have a few larger projects on the long-term timeline, our company’s superpower is that we don’t start something that we can’t finish. Once an idea reaches critical mass in terms of passion and momentum, we find a way to provide the adequate resources and time in order to complete it.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

We are very careful about the projects that we take on because we know this will become part of us for the rest of our life. We take the stories we tell very seriously because we know that it’s more than just a movie. Each project is a community building tool that we are inherently tied to for its usable life. Whether it’s having in-person events or creating educational materials, our face is always present in the work we do. And as a result, we have a high level of integrity for the projects we put out into the world. Over the years, our audience has come to expect a level of quality and also an experience that comes with the project. We also tend to work in a lot of small communities where there’s an accountability to the people where you’re creating your work. This gets back to our audience based approach.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.burningtorchproductions.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/burningtorchmark/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mark.pedri
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-pedri-975b3043/

Image Credits

Carrie McCarthy for the first one. Mark Pedri for the rest except the last Emmy one- that’s Mark’s dad, Gary Pedri