About Marc

Marc Caplan’s 25 year career spanned the dawn of the digital revolution. From top London Editor in the 1980s, to a world leader in On-Air TV branding in the new multi-channel era of the ‘90s to pioneering in the early days of the Internet’s New Media.

EARLY DAYS

Marc James Caplan was born in Clifton, Cape Town in 1959. As a small child, he dismantled everything electronic to see how it worked. As a young teenager with his Grandpa’s 8mm camera, he became preoccupied with making movies and used his family mostly as actors or technicians. And so his two passions emerged – technical know-how and making beautiful moving images. At Sea Point Boys High School he started the first photographic society and was one of the first twelve students at the Pretoria Technikon – South Africa’s first Film School. After completing the 2 year course, he left for London in 1979, avoided conscription and joined Molinare – a high-end production facility – as a trainee video tape editor.

TECHNOLOGY MAESTRO

Top London Editor

Marc Caplan was one of LONDON’S TOP VIDEO TAPE EDITORS AND TECHNICAL DIRECTORS in the 1980s. He worked in the analogue world but he watched as digital technology made its gradual appearance. There was nothing Marc didn’t know about the latest in editing and graphic equipment. His creativity took flight in the fun, experimental, new genre of TV music videos in the ’80s for bands like Queen, The Cure and Eurythmics as well as TV commercials & other programming.

World wide promotions for equipment manufacturers

Marc was highly respected by manufacturers of TV editing and graphic equipment. – Grass Valley and Apex. For many years they flew him all over the world to demonstrate and promote their products to broadcasters and delegates at international industry conferences like NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) in Las Vegas, USA, the UK, Europe, and Japan.

Africa Agency for non-linear editing machine

In 1995, Marc teamed up again with his friends from Grass Valley to market their new Imix CUBE – a revolutionary, non-liner editing machine – in Africa. The CUBE was a strong competitor to the AVID machine. Marc and his MCM team, moved a number of units across the country to the early adopters. Marc said it was a superior system to AVID as did those who used and loved it. But it was a classic VHS/Betamax story and AVID was, sadly, first in a tough, new market.

On-Air TV Branding & Marketing

In 1989 Rupert Murdoch launched the SKY Satellite Network in the UK. It was a ‘landMarc’ event in UK Television history and for Marc’s career. He and his team had just 4 months to pull it together. It positioned him as an expert in On-Air TV channel branding in the new era of multi-channel television which exploded in the 1990’s with the launch of digital, satellite broadcasting. He masterminded award winning On-Air packaging, marketing campaigns and commercials for TV channels in the UK, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Greece, Botswana and South Africa. The rebranding of M-NET, K-TV, Supersport and an SABC channel called CCTV – between 1992 and 1996/7 – took him back ‘home’. South Africa, as a country, was also ‘rebranding’ and ‘relaunching’ during the transition from Apartheid to a multi-racial Democracy in 1994.

Move to Internet & New Media

In the late 1990’s Marc was still branding TV channels and making commercials, but he immersed himself in Web 1.0 and early Web 2.0 web technology. He wanted to use his technical and TV production insights to improve the visual quality and user experience of the ‘catalogue-style websites’. He also wanted to create new marketing opportunities for brands by integrating their website with other media, mobile telephony, SMS, email and ‘real live events’. Marc created a partnership with, the now highly respected, Pete Case who had moved from London to South Africa, and they created one of South Africa’s earliest digital agencies – BANDWIDTH in 1999. It was a ‘hard sell’, there were no financial models at the time and big corporates were very ‘tentative’ adopters. Slowly, Marc was able to convince the likes of General Motors and Anglo Gold to trust them.

Entrepreneur

SCORES was Marc’s first company and also the first independent production house in London. They produced on-air promos and trailers for ITV, UK Gold, Discovery, BBC and BSkyB. At the time, this work was only done by the TV stations themselves.
CAPLAN WILKIE was a partnership with Mike Wilke. They continued working for many UK channels, launched new channels like the Comedy Channel, rebranded M-NET (1992) in South Africa and sister company FILMNET in Scandinavia and Benelux countries and worked with SKY for 5 years.
THE TELEVISION CO. became the unit producing on-air work for the South African Channels, in particular, K-TV for a number of years.
MULTI-CHANNEL MEDIA was the Africa distribution agency for the digital editing suite – the Stratosphere.
BANDWIDTH was a partnership with Pete Case. They launched Botswana TV (and worked with the channel for 3 years ) and Hands that Shaped Humanity and became one of the earliest digital agencies in South Africa

ReMARCable

Influencer

From the launch of SKY (1989) to the launch of Botswana TV (1999), Marc influenced the world of Multi-Channel television. He pushed people, technology, networks – entire systems – to their limit to gear up for the step changes required to ‘standout’ from the rest. Marc surrounded himself with highly competent, creative people and he loved mentoring ambitious, young talent whose ideas and passion reminded him of himself.

Award Winning

As executive creative director, Marc, and the teams he worked with around the world, won many accolades at the world’s top industry awards like Promax, BDA, Emmy, Avante – these were the ‘Oscars’ of international On-Air design and marketing.

In the Air

Marc was often between 2 or 3 countries simultaneously. He would think nothing of taking a quick detour, overnight, to receive an award in the USA or ‘pop off’ to Japan to demonstrate emerging technology before flying back to Africa. He was one of the first 20 Lifetime Platinum card holders with SAA

Pitch Perfect

Marc’s fierce, internal tenacity was hidden behind a laid-back, retiring personality. However, when it came to pitching his ideas to clients, he could ’put on a show’. His passion about the new era of communication and his disarming charm persuaded executives and the teams he had to work with to ‘go with his ambitious but timeous ideas’. This was Marc’s magic.

Unique

One of his great attributes was humour . He loved music and was adept at sourcing just the right piece for every promo. He was never without a camera – from film cameras, to polaroid camera’s, camcorders and finally, his high-resolution, digital Hasselblad (the cell-phone had only started taking photo’s in 2003).

Dreamer

Ever the dreamer, Marc wanted his own TV channel in the 1980’s, his own TV network in the 1990’s and in the 2000’s, he was building ideas around a ‘digital platform’. He also wanted to build a beautiful collaborative space for all sorts of people in different creative arts and technical disciplines.