Mark Chaudoir

In the interview, Paula Williams, Tim Platt and Mark Chaudoir, three friends and former colleagues at BBC Television Graphics Department and Red Bee Media, reminisce about the changes they had witnessed in the motion graphics industry. Looking back, they now realised how incredibly lucky they had been to have worked at a time which was a golden age for designers in Presentation motion graphics.

Mark Chaudoir is a director of commercials, content and short-form films. During his extensive career at the BBC, Mark won over 50 international industry awards. Mark has a Royal College of Art MA in Graphic Design and began working in the BBC TV Graphic Design Department upon graduation. The highlight of his BBC career was winning a coveted D&AD Gold Award for designing and directing some of the BBC2 idents in the decade 1990 to 2000. He directed the BBC Italia ‘90 World Cup trailer with Pavarotti’s ‘Nessan Dorma’ aria as its soundtrack. In 2001 he became a full-time director for BBC Creative Services, directing a wide variety of both BBC and commercial projects, which included filming BBC correspondents for BBC News countdown and brand films, which have aired over 8000 times a year before the BBC News Bulletin since 2005. Mark made the 2008 Olympics film for the Beijing Olympic Committee, working with an entirely Chinese crew and doing all the post-production in Beijing. 

In 2009 Mark left BBC Creative Services to become a freelance director and clients have included advertising agencies Ogilvy & Mather, Rainey Kelly Y&R, VCCP, and Leo Burnett. He has directed content films for South Africa Tourism, Hays Recruitment, Roche, London and Partners and The Royal Palaces. Mark also worked for various charities, including Coexist, filming in Uganda and India, and he made a set of films for the successful campaign ‘Let’s Make London a National Park City’. He directed the United Nations film on counterfeiting, which won a Gold at the Media Awards. Mark has directed poetry shorts with leading UK stand up poets Kae Tempest, Rob Auton, Polar Bear and Bang Said the Gun. His 2022 documentary ‘The Last Cuckoo: Dennis Gould’, about the poet, activist and letterpress artist, is on the festival circuit.