Marc Wolff was born on August 25th 1947 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He spent his childhood living in Hackensack, New Jersey, a suburb of New York City. After a year at university studying industrial engineering Marc entered the U. S. Army in 1966 and served a five-year tour of duty. He attended infantry officer training school in 1967, obtaining a commission as a second lieutenant; he then went on to flight school in Texas and Georgia, graduating as a helicopter pilot in 1968. His military service included one year (1968-1969) conducting combat flight operations in South Vietnam as a helicopter pilot and helicopter platoon leader where he was responsible for a flight of 8 helicopters. He also served a two-year tour of duty in West Germany (1970-71) as commander of a mechanised infantry company and later a battalion intelligence officer. In 1969 he was promoted to the rank of Captain, making him the youngest Captain in the US Army at the age of 21. He received an honorable discharge in November 1971 having been awarded a Bronze Star for service and 22 awards of the Air Medal.
Marc then took a course of advance flight training at Flight Safety, Inc. in Vero Beach, Florida, gaining commercial airplane, instrument, multi-engine airplane and flight instructor licenses to go along with his commercial helicopter pilot's license. In 1972 Marc moved to Britain where he did further flight training at the Oxford Air Training School in Oxford, England. Here he obtained an Airline Transport Pilot's license for helicopters and later a commercial balloon pilot's license.
He spent four years with a commercial helicopter company in Britain where the flying covered the whole spectrum of commercial helicopter operations including external load lifting, mapping, long line mineral surveys, agricultural spraying, executive charter and aerial filming. He resigned as chief pilot and a company director in 1976 to start his own business, providing a comprehensive aviation service to the film and TV industry worldwide. This business has grown into the present day Flying Pictures Ltd.
Marc has a wide background of flying experience in mountain, glacier, arctic, jungle, desert and over-water operations in 52 countries around the world. He has passed Swiss, French, Italian, New Zealand and Canadian mountain flying tests. He has been a UK CAA Type Rating Flight Test Examiner for helicopters and a US FAA Certified Flight Instructor in airplanes. Marc is a member of the Professional Flight Instructor Group of the US National Aero Club.
Marc first began working on films in 1972 and since then has been involved with over 140 feature films, more than 200 commercials and numerous television programmes and documentaries. Marc has directed several short films and commercials; he started directing aerial units on feature films in 1989 and second units in 2005. He now devotes the majority of his time to directing second unit and action unit sequences for films but continues to fly both aerial camera and aerial stunt work for films on a regular basis. Marc is a member of the Directors Guild of America, the Screen Actors Guild and the Guild of British Camera Technicians. He has completed courses and workshops in Camera Operating, Screen Writing, Directing as Visual Storytelling, Craft Editing, Editing with Final Cut Pro, Psychology, and the French language.
"Shoot to Thrill", a one-hour documentary about Marc's working life from Vietnam to the present, and centered around the production of the James Bond Film, "Tomorrow Never Dies", was made by the Discovery Channel and shown world-wide by Discovery, and on ITV in the UK.
Marc was married in 1983 to Lin George, a former documentary producer with National Geographic and Disney. They have 2 children: Lily, who was born in 1989 in Chiang Mai, Thailand, while Marc was there directing the aerial unit on the film, Air America, and Henry, who was born in 1993 in Plymouth, England. After spending 28 years living in London and Cornwall, Marc now lives in France near the city of Nice.
