Michael Mercadante: Bio

Michael Mercadante was born in 1974 in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, a town that James Michener, Pearl Buck, Dorothy Parker and Margaret Mead had also once called home. He created his first video, called "Newton's Laws of Motion Demonstrated", at the age of 12 for a class project. At 15, he was working as a lighting assistant for a local industrial video company while also writing, directing, editing and co-hosting his own weekly entertainment variety show on local access cable television (see some clips of it on the CrackerHammer YouTube page).

After high school, he studied communications and television production at Bucks County Community College, then headed off to study Moving Image Arts at one of the nation's most prestigious film schools, The College of Santa Fe. As a sophomore then, he was not allowed to take production classes, as they were reserved for upperclassmen. Instead, he buried himself in writing, art and film theory classes, including an Experimental Cinema class taught by the legendary Gene Youngblood. To satisfty his need for production, he took a teaching assistant job in the "Equipment Cage", which allowed him access to the cameras and editing suites after-hours, and started creating content for Santa Fe public access TV. After a year in the desert, he returned home, and shortly thereafter left college altogether.

For ten years, Michael bounced around the country, taking whatever work might offer some creative opportunities while paying the rent. He worked as a sports cinematographer, including some time as a ringside cameraman at professional wrestling events (ask him about hanging out with legends such as King Kong Bundy and Captain Lou Albano). He created a documentary about the West Chester High School girls' soccer team winning the 1995 state championship title, which won him a 1996 Telly Award. He served as one of the cinematographers on the documentary "A Year Without Time", which profiled a family canoeing the length of the Mississippi, from its headwaters in Montana down to the Gulf of Mexico. He also jumped in on the ground floor of a low-power television station, WELL-TV, by designing its studios, control room and editing suites, consulting on equipment purchases, and training staff. The station was sold to an existing network in 2000.

In 1999, he was hired as a Research Assistant by The Scientex Corporation, a transportation safety consulting firm located in Montgomery County, PA. During this time, he started working professionally with Flash animation and website design. In January 2001, he followed Scientex's vice president, who launched his own company called TransAnalytics. In six years with TransAnalytics, Michael created multimedia content, including websites and hundreds of driver ed videos, for clients such as AAA (American Automobile Association), PennDOT, and the U.S. government (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration). He also provided illustrations for the Pennsylvania Driver's Manual, and technical writing and copy editing for numerous technical manuals and research papers.

In January 2005, Michael began attending Temple University full-time. In addition to classes, he worked as a writer for the campus newspaper, and as a DJ for the radio station. In August 2005, Temple hired him as General Manager of the radio station for the following school year. During this time, he developed a brand-new website and successfully promoted many on-campus live concerts. In December 2006, he graduated cum laude with a B.A. degree in American History.

Beginning in 2007, Michael joined the staff of ITT Technical Institutes as Adjunct Professor of Multimedia Design. He also joined The Philadelphia Zoo as Manager of Online Communications, where he oversees content development for a website that receives more than 8 million page views annually.

Michael got married in June 2007. He and his wife Erica celebrated the birth of their daughter, Georgia Rose, in June 2008.