THE FILMMAKERS

Combining over 25 years of filmmaking experience William Arntz, Betsy Chasse, and Mark Vicente blend the mediums of film, interview, animation and visual effects to address the latest scientific answers to the most important questions in life: “Who, or what, are we? Why do we do what we do? How do we affect the world around us? How to do effect change?”

William Arntz
Producer, Screenwriter, President Captured Light Industries, Inc.

William Arntz graduated summa cum laude in 1972 from Penn State University with a degree in Engineering Science then worked as a research physicist with Pratt and Whitney Aircraft on the first wave optics simulator for high-energy gas dynamic laser weapons (a.k.a. “Star Wars”). After two years he reunited with a longtime friend who was enrolled in the Master’s Degree film program at Boston University. Together they created, Beat the Deva, a one-hour animated film noir, which won a Cine Eagle, the Kenyon Film Festival, and was distributed on the art house circuit. Upon completion of the film in 1980, William moved to California and became a Buddhist.

In the late 80’s his Buddhist teacher assigned him the task of using his meditation/visualization skills to create computer software. With $100,000 in savings and no business experience, in five months William wrote AutoSys – a distributed job scheduler and one of the most widely used pieces of System Management software ever written, used by such clients as Merrill Lynch, NASA, ILM, Sun Microsystems, Cisco, and Boeing. In 1995 William devised a second successful software product, which he sold nine months later. “Retiring” for the 3rd time he finally decided to unite his four great passions: (1) leading edge science, (2) spirituality (3) filmmaking and (4) computers. The result? The creation of What the BLEEP Do We Know?!

Betsy Chasse
www.eloramedia.com
Producer, Director, Screenwriter

In 2004, Betsy was part of the creative team behind the sleeper hit, What The Bleep Do We Know?!. She is credited as Writer, Director and Producer of the movie, along with William Arntz and Mark Vicente. To date, “The Bleep” is one of the highest grossing documentaries of all time, and has shipped over 1 million DVDs in the first six months of its DVD release. Betsy was listed in Variety’s top 50 Independent Producers of 2004.

Betsy began her film production career as a Production Assistant on a low, low, low budget action picture where, on her first day, she promptly totaled her car. Fortunately, the Producer was in the car with her and could think of no other way to assist her except by promoting her to Production Coordinator (She didn’t need a car for that). After that, Betsy served as Production Coordinator on several films including, Best of the Best 2, and Robert Altman’s, The Player. Her first outing as a Production Manager came with the independent film, Public Access, directed by Bryan Singer, which won the 1995 Sundance Film Festival

Since then she has freelanced as a Production Manager and Line Producer on over 30 feature films. In 1996 Betsy started her own production company, Rampant Feline Films, which has produced several features, cable specials, and music videos.

In 2006 Betsy started her own media and publishing company, Elora Media www.eloramedia.com, which offers spiritually oriented, motivational books, videos and music for children of all ages – adults included! She is a highly sought after speaker on such subjects as spirituality, the blending of science and spirituality, and marketing to the cultural creative demographic.

Betsy lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband Gordie, and their daughter Elorathea. When not producing, directing, writing, marketing, or traveling, she can be found happily at work in her organic vegetable and flower garden.

Mark Vicente
Director, Screenwriter

Born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1965 Mark’s father was in show business and his mother in the Diplomatic Service. As a child he traveled the world and lived in such diverse places as Portugal, Brazil, Canada, and the US. Following in the footsteps of his grandfather who owned an advertising agency, Mark soon developed a keen eye for visual storytelling. At age fourteen, Mark decided he wanted to make movies. Enrolled in drama school in South Africa at the age of eighteen, Mark, to his chagrin, found himself having to dance, act, and make strange primal noises in voice class. At the time all he kept thinking was, “I just want to be a cinematographer!” Little did he realize this diverse training would serve him well as a director in the future.

After mastering the Steadicam and working as a news-cameraman in Apartheid South Africa, Mark went on to shoot music videos and commercials. He got his first big break as Director of Photography on the musical, Sarafina starring Whoopi Goldberg. In 1992 he went to Hollywood to shoot a picture for Disney entitled, Fatherhood starring Patrick Swayze. At the age of 26, Mark was one of the youngest cinematographers to shoot a big budget studio picture. Over the next eight years he shot another 14 feature films. As exciting as it was to visually interpret other director’s stories, Mark found the subject matter sorely lacking. Convinced tales of greatness could be as exciting and financially successful as the more tawdry subjects so beloved by the industry, Mark to tell the stories he deeply cared about.

In 2000 Mark decided it was time to embrace his inevitable destiny as a director and began directing and shooting commercials and documentaries that gave voice to his rebellious and challenging sense of humor. His Rockumentary, Where Angels Fear To Tread, takes to task organized religion and the lengths to which human beings will use God as an excuse to abuse minorities. After directing What the BLEEP Do We Know?! Mark directed The Carrington Affair, a period/modern day love story about reincarnation which tracks it’s characters from the early 1900’s to today.