Storytellers first.
Strategists always.
Cinex Films is a Philadelphia production company built on a simple belief: cinematic craft and business results are not opposites. The best films do both.
Marc Smiler
It started with one wedding in 1993. Marc didn't set out to change how brands tell their stories — he picked up a camera, took on a job with a deadline that should have frightened him, and figured it out. Thirty-three years and more than a thousand productions later, that solutions-first instinct is still the thing clients describe first.
For the first few years he shot and edited for five different area photographers, which turned out to be the best training available. Five photographers meant five ways of seeing — how each one read light, staged a moment, chose what mattered in a frame. He took the best of each and left the rest, and that borrowed education is still in the work.
Then he went out on his own. An international award-winning director and cinematographer, he built his reputation on work that offers no second take — weddings, live events, brand launches — where the story has to be caught as it happens or not at all. You learn to read a room, to find the shot that matters, and to stay calm when the schedule doesn't.
Something always happens
Anyone can buy a camera. Knowing how to use one is table stakes now. What thirty-three years actually buys you is the person who knows what to do when the day goes sideways — because it will.
The weather turns. The location changes the morning of. Hair and makeup runs an hour behind. The car you booked for the hero shot never arrives, and when it finally does, it needs a wash.
People underestimate how much of this work is planning — and how much of that planning exists for the thing that goes wrong anyway. That is the job. Not operating the camera: knowing what to do at the moment a shoot should stop, so that it doesn't.
We just keep going. You get the film you were promised, and you usually never find out what almost went wrong.
Two decades of being called once a year
After twenty years of project work, a pattern became impossible to ignore. Businesses would commission something good, use it well for a month, and then go quiet until the next budget cycle — starting over each time with a vendor who had to relearn the company from scratch.
What they actually needed was not another supplier. It was a creative partner who already knew their voice, could see what was coming, and would keep showing up.
That became the Content Engine: the output of an in-house team without the overhead of one, built on three decades of craft and an unsentimental focus on what actually works.
A quarter century of it
Work featured on Oprah and published in EventDV, with productions taking him from Philadelphia to Brazil.
An international award-winning director and cinematographer, and past president of the Greater Philadelphia Videographers Association.
A frequent speaker on storytelling and production strategy, usually to rooms full of people who create for a living.
Thirty thousand hours behind a lens, and he still gets genuinely excited about a fast lens and the right music cue.
Bucks County, three kids,
and a drum kit
When he isn't behind a camera or building the next version of Cinex Films, Marc is in Bucks County with his wife of more than twenty years. Their three children — twins included — are all in college now.
He also still plays the drums, which explains a certain amount about how he thinks of timing in an edit.
A stress-free process
Six steps, refined over three decades, designed to save you time and money.
We start with your concerns, needs, and expectations — on site or over a video call. No frame gets pitched before we understand the business behind it.
Creative concepts and scripts that let you see the finished film before we shoot it. A well-crafted script is the backbone of a successful project.
Locations, lighting, time of day, sound, crew. Every detail is settled in advance — which is exactly what makes a shoot day feel calm.
We film with the right crew for the job, and we make the people on camera comfortable. That is most of what separates good footage from awkward footage.
Edit, effects, graphics, color, and sound balanced into a finished piece — plus the versions each platform needs.
The finished project, on time, ready to work. Thirty-three years of doing this means very few surprises.