About Maniac Films Ltd

Maniac Films are an award-winning media production company based in beautiful North Devon, UK. We make films including drama, corporate communications, documentary videos, music videos, sports videos, live event coverage and interactive content for DVD, Blu-ray, smart phones and digital cinema. We provide services in post production for editing, colour grading, visual effects, format conversions, rotoscoping and motion graphics as well as full production services for video and audio. We offer camera and camera accessory rental and use our experience to help you choose the best gear to suit your needs and budget.

Mark Brindle MM IOV

Maniac Films was started in 2002 by Mark Brindle as an experimental escape from the creative limitations of the Telecommunications and Networking Industry of the last century and a way to help him stay in North Devon and not keep flying all over the world because its not as glamorous as it sounds! Mark's creative passion and technical IT skills influenced his decision to get into film-making and post-production - 'how hard can it be?'. Although it might have been the chance to go to Australia and Fiji filming surfing and windsurfing and the opportunity to go surfing more...but after nearly 10 years in the media industry and about 15 years before that in Networking & IT, Mark thinks he knows a bit more about what he's doing and is a regular contributor of articles and video equipment reviews for the UK Institute of Videography (IOV) magazine, Focus. Mark has produced/directed/filmed/edited/graded a range of productions from extreme sports events, music and instructional DVDs to feature drama, music videos, award winning documentaries, interactive learning DVDs, smart phone application content and corporate promotional films. Contact Maniac Films for your next video production, grading, vfx or dvd authoring project.

IMDB profile - LinkedIn profile - Youtube Channel - IOV website - Shooters profile

Mark is a master member of the UK Institute of Videography (IOV) and a member of Cine South West and Plymouth Media partnership (PMP) and has won several Media Innovation Awards for films and DVDs through the South West media innovation network. He has an BENG Hons engineering degree in Electronic Computer Systems from Salford University and was a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) in a previous career.

More recently Mark has been involved in feature drama production in roles such as 1st AC (Focus Puller), Visual effects supervisor and Colour Grading, but still does a lot of DVD authoring for both small scale productions and larger scale DVD and CD-ROM projects, plus corporate video productions, especially in technical subjects where his strong IT background helps in understanding the subject matter.

Marks Specialities:

DVD & blu-ray authoring, Video post production and colour grading, photography, audio recording and post production, lighting, music licensing, video filming, jib operator, editing, dolly grip, focus puller, FCP, Photoshop, Motion. E-commerce website design PHP, MySQL, HTML, and CSS.

Stu Gaunt AM IOV

Stu Gaunt joined Maniac Films full time in 2008 after being involved on a number of filming projects as a freelancer. Stu is an Associate member of the UK Institute of Videography (IOV) and his work has been nominated for a Media Innovation Award through the South West Media Innovation network. Stu has been a skateboarder for 15 years and first started using a video camera when he injured himself one summer and couldn’t skate – so he filmed his friends instead. This led to him taking a college course and making a number of local skate films, then progressing into work for local festivals and theatre groups which he continues to do today. A lover of photography, Stu not only works in the digital medium but also owns a large (and growing!) collection of vintage cameras dating back to the 1950’s. He has also been teaching himself the art of sound mixing in preparation for a new film.

IMDB profile - Youtube Channel - IOV website

Recently Stu has worked in a number of feature drama production roles including Grip, Sound recording, Set photography, Visual effects and Rotoscoping. He also does a lot of work in DVD authoring, DVD artwork design, product photography, video editing and website design.

Stus Specialities:

Photography, digital image manipulation, audio recording and editing, DVD authoring, Video editing, Video filming, camera operator, jib operator and grip.