Making Magic: Filmmaker Mark Alex Vogt Discusses His Vision Of Creating

By Remy Sisk • Photos By Matt Johnson

Not many Louisvillians can say they’ve built a costume piece for Beyoncé, but Mark Alex Vogt has done just that. A Louisville native and St. Xavier High School grad, Vogt is a co-owner of MacGuffin Makers, a California-based company specializing in prop building, set piece making, production design and more. He also works as a filmmaker himself, with his sources of inspiration rooted in good ol’ American science-fiction.

“I’ve been a maker for my entire life, as long as I can remember,” Vogt says. He recalls tinkering around in his parents’ garage, working on Star Wars costumes and Nerf guns. Fast forward to the COVID shutdown and Vogt found himself in California for directing but of course, given the pandemic, had nothing to direct. With the downtime, he started making TikTok videos of the prop replicas and other specialty projects he was working on at home, which led to some high-profile attention. 

His breakout project came when he got a call to design an X-Wing for rapper Denzel Curry’s set at Coachella in 2022. “I, of course, said yes, not knowing how I was going to pull it off,” Vogt says. “And by saying yes, I scrambled and called a bunch of people and met some people in the special effects industry out here that were also carpenters. And we really hit it off.”

The X-Wing turned out stupendously and Vogt eventually found himself establishing a formal company with his collaborators on the project. MacGuffin Makers is now a thriving operation that offers “an array of fabrication and design capabilities that redefine the standard.” The company has built props, set pieces and more for several high-profile clients, including Beyoncé. For the artist’s 2023 Renaissance World Tour, Vogt and company designed and built her signature silver helmet.

The piece was perfectly up Vogt’s alley in particular as he’s been a longtime science-fiction fan and has embraced the genre as a major influence and inspiration for his design. “I grew up on sci-fi in all forms,” he shares. “And definitely that is where my heart is and where I love to be.”

MacGuffin’s most recent project was right in line with this aesthetic; the team created two promotional robots that were used in marketing for “The Electric State,” a new Netflix film starring Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt. “We got to pull all the tricks out of the hat in terms of aging things, distressing things,” he says. “It was a combination of real metal and printed parts and all this stuff that kind of made up the final look of that weathered sort of ’90s-era tech.”

Science-fiction has also inspired Vogt’s own filmmaking. “Film was, I always said, what I’m born to do,” he maintains. “That’s what I’m going to do. And, you know, the making side of things, especially as I was growing up, was always kind of in service of the directing side of things.” Indeed, when Vogt directed and needed something special, without the cash to commission something, he would just make it himself.

Material-wise, Vogt has worked on commercials for a number of years as well as shorter narrative projects. He affirms directing features is his endgame but also says he’s found a love for the commercial production as well. He recently created an entry for the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl contest, where fans could submit commercials for a chance at a cash prize and to have the commercial aired during the big game. Vogt’s submission – in his signature retro sci-fi style – made it into the top 25, and he looks back on the experience as really proving that the industry is hungry for what he has to offer.

With his key influences ranging from Star Wars and Spielberg to “The Twilight Zone” and “Alien,” Vogt is only continuing upward on his filmmaking trajectory. While hopeful for anything that may come his way, he emphasizes there’s no place like home and perhaps the greatest ambition could be to direct features right here in his hometown. “I live in California, but I have a house in the Highlands, and, you know, I love being home,” he says. “Louisville will always be home. And if one day I can make movies from home, then that’s the dream come true.”