BAFTA Breakthrough profile: Mark Choi

Mark Choi is a composer and classically trained pianist. He is the founder of Sonaris Ensemble, a quintet of video game musicians, and is the resident composer of Whole Hog Theatre. Choi was chosen as a BAFTA Breakthrough for his work on the soundtrack to Tower Five’s Empire of the Ants; he has also received an Ivor Novello nomination for Best Original Video Game Score for his work on the game.

How does it feel to be nominated as a BAFTA Breakthrough?

Pretty amazing, and quite unexpected. It’s just one of those things where you apply and you just move on and forget about it. You have no expectations. And so when it comes back you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I remember I did that now!’

How did you become a video game composer?

I started off as a classical pianist, but it wasn’t a lifestyle that I really wanted to pursue, because being a classical pianist meant being a concert pianist at that point. And while I loved it, I was not fully invested in that, not practicing as much as my peers. It was a really big passion of mine, but not something that I could make a career out of.

I did a computer science degree and ended up doing tech jobs for a while, mostly in start-ups, with varying degrees of success. Then about 10, 15 years ago, I decided that I really needed to scratch the musical itch again. I turned to video games because I’ve been playing them all my life, and when you’re working in a tech company, it’s easy to twist a few arms and say, ‘Hey, let’s make a game together’. So I basically forced a few engineers to make games so that I could write music for them.

How did Empire of the Ants come about?

I’d been composing on the side for about 10 years, and then I started getting a couple of jobs coming in, and started looking seriously at more projects. I went full time about three years ago, and the link to Empire of the Ants came from someone that I had worked with previously at a tech company who had started working for a video game company. He was like, ‘The pitching process for our game has started, would you be interested in submitting something?’

It’s kind of amazing if you think about it: you might think a step in your journey has no relevance, but somehow that completely tangential thing led me to this opportunity.

What soundtracks have you worked on?

This was my first, I would say, full soundtrack: although I had done a couple of smaller indie games before. One of them was Path of Kami, which was by a studio called Captilight. I’m also the resident composer of a UK-Japan theatre company called Whole Hog Theatre. Most recently we did an adaptation of Makoto Shinkai’s The Garden of Words, and we did it in English in the UK and in Japanese in Japan. So that was probably my biggest work before Empire of the Ants.

When it came to Empire of the Ants, what was your approach?

Because it was a story about ants, we really wanted to focus on natural sounds – so we wanted to avoid things like vocals and synths, and anything that could imply human involvement. It’s based on a book by a French journalist, and it’s mostly based in Fontainebleau Forest – so the team actually went to Fontainebleau Forest outside of Paris to record the sounds of the forest.

It was very collaborative, and the team was lovely, so it was very easy to bounce ideas or get some feedback. It’s always a joy to write music that you love for a game that you enjoy with a team that you have a good chemistry with.

Do you get the opportunity to work with real instruments and musicians, or is that out of scope for most of the games you work on?

I always use live instruments. I have a nice piano in the living room, which I record for pretty much everything. I’ve also made friends with a lot of musicians over the years, and I’ve helped with some of their recordings, so there’s the occasional favour swap between pros.

I mentioned favour swaps, but in most cases for these projects, I will make sure there is some kind of budget for musicians, because I think it’s very important that musicians are paid for their work. As a composer, I really believe in that.

So you push people for bigger budgets to allow for musicians?

Exactly. And if not, then I will happily dive into my own pocket. I think it’s an investment in quality. You just want to make sure that it’s the best that it can be.

And in terms of being a BAFTA Breakthrough, how do you think it’s going to help your career?

I’m really excited to find out, to be honest. When I went full-time three years ago, I joined BAFTA Connect, and I know that changed so much for me in terms of the friends that I made in the industry, and the masterclasses, the roundtables, the game socials… When you’re in a solitary profession, having that sort of community is really, really important. So I really treasure everything that BAFTA has done for me so far.

But with Breakthrough, I think it’s just so exciting, because I am predominantly in games and theatre, but there’s a huge opportunity for me to make friends with more TV and film people and see what opportunities are there. I mean, ultimately, it’s all about what interesting stories are being told, and do they resonate with me, and would I enjoy working with these people? And hopefully I can find opportunities to click with new creatives.

I’m interested in what the differences are between working in games and working in TV and film. Do you think music is perhaps more of an afterthought in games?

I don’t have much experience on the TV and film side, but on the game side, I have been involved relatively early on. So you feel like you’re a part of the team, you are part of the creative process.

My understanding is that’s not always the case in TV and film. And with TV, if it’s episodic, then you have to just go in depending on the schedule and get things done. Theatre’s the same: you’ve got the rehearsals, and then you’ve got tech week to iron out any issues. In some ways that was why I loved doing theatre, although I would never want to have a career in that.

Why wouldn’t you want to have a career in it?

I think it would just be too intense for me. I’ve got family and I’ve got other goals, and I think the idea of going from one intense project to another, back to back, possibly in different locations… Maybe if I were a bit younger, that might be an option.

Now you have the luxury of working from home.

Exactly. I can handle the school runs. But with theatre, you are forced to be efficient and get your ideas out, and not be too precious about them. There’s a lot of amazing things that it teaches you about composing that you won’t get if you’re given a year and a half to keep editing. It’s a different skillset.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Discover more about the other members of the 2025 BAFTA Breakthrough games cohort: Kyle Banks, Stanley Baxton, Sally Beaumont, and Cara Ellison.