John Beck-Hofmann

About John Beck-Hofmann

John is an award-winning filmmaker & director of photography whose extensive documentary footage of nearly every NASA Mars mission since 1995, has been seen repeatedly on National Geographic, PBS, featured in two IMAX movies, and countless other Discovery Channel programs. His most famous works have been the creation of the NASA viral videos “Seven Minutes of Terror” and \"Jupiter: into the Unknown\". John\'s most recent work was shooting the Nat Geo documentary about NASA/JPL\'s Mars 2020 rover mission called \"Built for Mars\". John is also a composer, his most recent work was composing the score for Nat Geo\'s \"Built for Mars\". In 2019, he composed the score for Oliver Stone\'s 2-hour film \"Revealing Ukraine\", which won the Grand Prix award at the 2019 Taormina Film Festival. In 2018, he composed the score for the Nat Geo show \"Life of a Mars Rover\". In 2017, he composed scores for two films: Oliver Stone\'s two-hour film \"Ukraine on Fire\", and the animated feature film \"Last Prince of Atlantis.\" Other films he composed music for includes: Nat Geo\'s two-hour special,\"Expedition Mars\"; Discovery Channel\'s \"Red Planet Rover\" and the documentary feature,\"Maidan Massacre\", which he also directed. He composed the score for his 2-hour web series \"TYRANNY\" as well as multiple NASA video productions over the last 20 years, including the recent viral videos, “Seven Minutes of Terror\" and \"Jupiter: Into the Unknown.\" In 2014, John directed an investigative documentary about the Ukraine Revolution on February 20th, 2014. The documentary, called \"Maidan Massacre\", worked alongside forensic scientists as they examined the evidence of the shootings.\"Maidan Massacre\" won the \"People Choice\" Award at the 2014 Terra di Siena Film Festival in Siena, Italy, as well as the \"Audience Award\" at the 2016 Eurasia.doc festival in Smolensk, Russia.Earlier in 2014, John co-produced, shot, edited, and composed the score for an hour long documentary on the Mars Curiosity Rover for the Discovery Channel. In 2013, John was honored to receive NASA\'s Exceptional Achievement Medal and has received NASA’s “Videographer of the Year” award four times over the last 9 years. In 2009, he received an EMMY award for his work on National Geographic’s “Five Years on Mars” and in a Gold Plaque Award at the Chicago Film Festival for his documentary of NASA’s Mars Pathfinder Mission.

Experience

1. Senior Video Specialist

   Buildertrend

   Feb 2020 — Present · Omaha, NE

Education

• Azusa Pacific University

  Bachelor's degree - Communications

  1987 — 1992