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An innovative, award-winning business mentor and executive — advising on strategy, studio infrastructure and the technologies reshaping how stories get made.
Home / Consulting
An innovative, award-winning business mentor and executive — advising on strategy, studio infrastructure and the technologies reshaping how stories get made.
Alongside the camera, Marc has spent decades in the room where creative ventures are built — providing strategic business development, financial governance and IP advice for original and joint ventures, and start-up support across the digital and creative economy.
Four strands run through the practice: mentoring founders, creative-enterprise leadership, film-studio feasibility, and Virtual Production & AI.
01 — Business consulting & mentoring
Marc is a national mentor for Creative UK, working with founders on the Create Growth Programme and the Screen Launchpad start-up programme, and a national mentor for ScreenSkills.
As former Lead Creative Industries Mentor for Teesside University Graduate Enterprise, he was direct business advisor to North East companies that have since grown exponentially — among them Wander Films, Sockmonkey Games and Ithica Films — and to many individuals who have become significant contributors to the regional and international creative industries.
Mentor · Creative UK · ScreenSkills
02 — Creative-enterprise leadership
Marc was Creative Director of the Queen's Anniversary Prize-winning team behind Digital City Innovation — the ERDF-funded creative and digital enterprise programme at Teesside University — helping commercialise innovation and IP, and accelerating a generation of digital and creative start-ups.
Marc also acted as Lead Mentor for Creative Industries for the Teesside University Launchpad Graduate Incubator scheme. That experience underpins his ongoing work advising universities, LEPs, combined authorities and screen agencies on how to turn creative ambition into durable, fundable enterprise.
Creative Director · Digital City
03 — Film-studio builds
Marc was lead industries consultant for the Northern Film Studios, advising Tees Valley Combined Authority and Hartlepool Council on studio feasibility, immersive facilities and the workforce a studio actually needs to run.
His central argument is simple and hard-won: a studio without a trained, industry-ready crew is just a building. His research consistently pairs bricks-and-mortar studio investment with an indigenous skills pipeline — so that regional facilities create lasting local value rather than importing talent from elsewhere.
Lead consultant · Studio feasibility
04 — Virtual Production & AI
Marc curated and leads Learn to Fly — a summit and symposium creating a vision for Virtual Production training in the regions, presented in 2025 and developing through 2026 with collaborators including Joshua M. Kerr.
The programme makes the case that VP extends craft skills rather than replacing them — and that the 2026 inflection point in Gaussian Splats, NeRFs, AI keying and open-source Unreal/Blender workflows now puts high-quality, in-camera "blended reality" within reach of public-sector and education budgets, well below the cost of a full LED volume.
Curator · Learn to Fly
Learn to Fly 2025 · Virtual Production & AI symposium
Blended production & AI pipeline
Through KingBee Animation Studios, Marc is working with Innovate UK, CoStar and others on a blended Virtual Production and AI pipeline — combining real-time environments, in-camera VFX and AI tooling for children's and family content.
He is also a partner with ByteDance — the owners of TikTok — as this next generation of production tools takes shape.
KingBee · VP & AI
Nova Mundi Studios · Latest feature documentary
Alongside the consulting, Marc continues to produce. Nova Mundi's latest feature documentary, Home — a film about love, passion & pigeons, is an official selection at the Tees Valley International Film Festival, RS FilmFest and the Lift-Off First-Time Filmmaker Sessions 2024.
Home · Nova Mundi
The case I make to the room
Figures drawn from Marc's "Learn to Fly" and "Forging Forward" research (DCMS / BFI / ScreenSkills / PACT sources, 2022 baseline rising year-on-year).
Selected clients & partners
Consulting engagements, advisory roles, summit curation and research.