Sought after Lead Nuke Compositor, Visual Effects Supervisor and Director – Mark Larranaga is one of this generations most prolific Hollywood contributors. From box office hits like Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Avengers: Age of Altron to music videos for Charlie Puth, Janet Jackson, X Japan, Erykah Badu, and Will Smith he has created imagery that have awed audiences worldwide.
Larranaga composited on such favorites as Game of Thrones, The Revenant and The Last Jedi and has branched out into directing under his own brand SAINTSLA for major music videos for Beauty in the Breakdown “Firebird” and “Thinking bout You” – shooting two videos in one day. He is also, simultaneously, directing a talk show called “The Velvet Rope Show”.
Larranaga’s skills in visual effects has long been admired. He has also worked for Bad Robot, Marvel, Sony Imageworks, Cinesite and Digital Domain.
Growing up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, surrounded by blue skies, art galleries, musicians and Native American Indian and Spanish Influences, Mark developed a love for the arts. Every class he took his Junior and Senior year was arts related – sculpting, drawing, making jewelry - so Mark explored that vibrant, exciting new world, finding his own artistic outlet in designing and creating pyrotechnic displays and light shows for local bands.
Caught up in the thrill of the music industry and technology, he moved to California at the age of 18 to attend DeVry Institute of Technologies to study engineering, while interning at a Music Management company where he learned a lot about the workings of the Music Industry. He landed a job in Post Production as the evening Operations Manager for Encore Hollywood – and here began the love for the post production process and quick turnaround business operations.
Working long after hours learning Quantel’s Paintbox into the early morning, and then software packages like Henry which soon led to Auto Desk Flame software – a montage of his skillsets and influences manifested into application to create and in a passion to keep learning more.
Getting his chops up on the Flame software, Digital Domain was the buzz word around town so he decided to put together a demo reel and soon got hired doing rotoscoping. This led into a night position as Flame artist and started his career in feature film visual effects working on high profile features like Dante’s Peak, The Fifth Element and What Dreams May Come - with the best of the best.
More, always more – His portfolio now includes many of the most popular films in the last 20 years www.imdb.com/name/nm0488562/
Time to grow, he launched his own companies X1FX and then SAINTSLA where he furthered his talents in Management, Supervision, Directing and Producing. Working with Directors and Creatives alike he enjoys being on the ground floor of a project, allowing him to influence and contribute his years of creative knowledge to the start of a job. He’s now venturing into the world of VR/AR for the Medical and Educational fields, Entertainment and Travel.