MARK BRISTOL

I spent over two years assisting Chris McQuarrie in designing all the action scenes in this phenomenal film. More to come

I worked on this movie for 20 months. I worked on the helicopter chase for about six of those months and even I am BLOWN AWAY by the footage I've seen so far. What a spectacular team of filmmakers. You must plan so intricately and meticulously to make these spectacular scenes possible. It starts with an idea-- brainstorming with the writer- director, location scouting, meetings after meetings. Storyboards after storyboards. More meetings with stunts, DP, Tom Cruise. Then once the massive set of boards are approved it goes to "previs," which I directed. THEN once all of that preproduction is complete-- the hard part arrives-- filming it. That cast and crew achieved a nearly impossible mission. I can’t wait to see it on the big screen! Update: My family was treated by the director, my friend Chris McQuarrie, to see a sneak peak of the film in London 2 weeks ago. It is one of the greatest action films of all time.

Samples from 80 films, 8 games, and hundreds of commercials and music videos.

I had an amazing time working on the film for many months at home and on location in London.

I was invited by my good friend Chris McQuarrie on a true adventure. We worked together in London, the U.S. and Morocco for over a year on his exhilarating film.

Creation of the War Bonds style poster for the film. Writer Chris McQuarrie called and said he had a problem and I was the only one who could fix it. Edge needed a futuristic War Bonds poster and he and TC were not pleased with the concepts submitted. I immediately knew what he was after and I sent a number of sketches over. He and TC approved one of the sketches and the reference image from NC Wyeth. Then Chris asked for final art in three days because they would shoot the poster in five days. So I called my friend Matt Hall and he "knocked it out of the park" in record time. Matt and I were so pleased to see the poster used so much in the film and marketing. UPDATE: I have received a lot of emails requesting this print. The poster is not currently available through Warner Brothers. If there is any change to this fact I will post the news here first. Thanks!

With the release of The Tree of Life I am featuring my work on this amazing masterpiece that I was very fortunate to have worked on. Excerpt from an American Cinematography interview with John Toll. AC: From what you've said about Malick's personality, I'm assuming he isn't big on storyboards. Toll: Actually, we did storyboard a few sections of the film. At the beginning of the picture, the troops are on a transport ship on the way to Guadalcanal, and there's a big landing sequence. We storyboarded that because we didn't have the resources to have the numbers of real ships and transports that we needed; we had to do some CGI, so we used the sketches to simplify our lives. Whenever you have a sequence on the water, you can immediately get into trouble if you're not prepared. UPDATE 11/7/14 As a result of all the recent interest in this collection I dug into the archives and posted more boards from the film. Enjoy.