At age 11 Mark Mrnka ’87 was already making films as a hobby. Then he saw Star Wars and knew what he wanted to do for a living. When he graduated with a degree in cinema and photography, he moved to California and decided to get into the niche business of creating advertising trailers for films. He met with quite a lot of success, doing the trailers for blockbuster hits like Jurassic Park, Lost World, and Twister (for which he won the Key Art advertising award). Then an opportunity of a lifetime came along for the kid who’d been blown away by George Lucas’s culture-changing 1979 epic. Mrnka beat out some tough competition to be the editor/producer of the teaser trailer for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace trailer, which premiered to great excitement last November. He also did the second trailer, which debuted on movie screens March 12. Mrnka has been docked at George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch in Northern California since August 1998. He worked three months, almost around the clock, to make the Menace teaser, which runs just over two minutes. The second trailer runs a little longer and took about a month to produce. Mrnka also worked on a music video of the movie’s John Williams score, which debuted on MTV and VH1 in May. Mrnka brought two of his classmates in on the projects: Dan Kelly was the postproduction assistant editor on both trailers, and Paul Grim was copywriting consultant on the teaser trailer. Grim and Kelly performed their work in Los Angeles. Grim has worked at MGM for eight years and recently wrote a screenplay called Bohemian Grove. His advertising copy has appeared in the trailer and in poster designs for the feature film The Relic. Kelly, who freelances as an assistant film editor, has also worked on trailers for such films as Cliffhanger, The Fugitive, and both Die Hard movies. — Penny Bianconi