In High School, Mike played Football and Tennis.  He also gave up singing in choir to pursue acting and drama.  He student directed as a junior, and was cast as the "Father" character his senior year in the Winter Production of "Enter Laughing". In 1987, Mike won the Yakima District High School Tennis Finals in doubles to qualify for a State Tennis Birth.  "I always knew that I wanted to be involved in film and video work.  I remember one day at tennis practice one of the women on our team had a video camera from a skillcenter class she was taking.  Everyone else was nervous with a strange camera around them.  Not me...I started climbing up the tennis court fence just to do something interesting!  Needless to say, I got edited into the final highlight video."

After graduating from Selah High School in 1987, Mike began college at Pacific Lutheran University (PLU).  He was elected to the Freshman Senator position for the 1987-88 school year.  "I enjoyed PLU and I learned a lot about how to study and manage my time on my own.  I had many great experiences there, and continued to be involved in drama and acting, even taking a Shakespeare class that I thoroughly enjoyed."

In January of 1989, Mike was encouraged by his mother, Susan Lorrain, to attend a school back East for a one month experience through an exchange program at PLU.  Mike picked a school in North Carolina called Salem College that he new absolutely nothing about.  He was accepted and flew out only to find out that he was the only male at an "All women's school".  "I couldn't believe it when I showed up at the campus.  There I was in an environment with 500 women."  At Salem, Mike enrolled in a class called "Understanding Cinema".  The professor noticed Mike's enthusiasm for films, and borrowed a VHS camcorder from a friend, giving Mike the chance to write and direct his own movie, starring the other 22 women in his class.  Mike jumped at the chance and wrote a Murder Mystery entitled "Trouble at Salem".  It can be said that after producing his first "film", Mike had found his calling.  Mike returned from North Carolina with a newfound spirit for making movies.  His parents purchased a VHS camcorder for Mike to use and continue his development at writing, directing and editing productions.

In March of 1989, Mike transferred from PLU to the University of Washington.  It was there that he really started trying to "break into television".  "I wanted to make movies someday...pure and simple."  After a lot of persistence, Mike landed a part-time student job working in the University's Instructional Media Services department as a camera operator/grip.  "I was so excited to be working around TV cameras. It didn't matter what I was doing, it was just great to be a part of it."  Mike graduated in 1992 with a degree in Business Administration / Marketing.  During his last quarter in early 1992, Mike did a self-study senior thesis research project on Corporations and Video Production.  What is interesting is that two out of the four video producers Mike interviewed during that time he now works with on various projects.

From 1994 to 1997, Mike worked as a freelance camera-op for a number of companies including UWTV, Fox Sports Northwest, and KOMO-TV.  It was during those years that Mike was introduced to the computer and how it could be used for post production and graphics.  Returning to part-time work at UWTV, Mike worked on his own at night, producing a video documenting the University of Washington cheerleaders.  "I needed projects to do to push my creativity to higher levels.  Since my sister Julie was a cheerleader on the squad, I figured it would be a fun project."  He pushed the university's FAST Video Machine (one of the first non-linear edititng systems) to such creative limits it attracted a lot of attention from others in the TV department. Also, back in 1995, Mike started getting involved in Computer Animation using an MS-DOS based program called 3D Studio.  He also started experimenting with Adobe Photoshop and how it could be used to enhance video work.


Mike met his friend Norbert Caoili in 1994 working at UWTV, and together they created a new company in April 1996 called Quantum Productions Inc.  The rest is history.  Over the next 10 years Mike excelled at pretty much all aspects of production. Shooting, location sound, editing and computer graphics to name a few. He leaves the music composing however, to Norb. Over the last five years Mike has moved into more location sound work. Producers like having him handle sound on shoots because he can double as a visual effects supervisor, and he's usually editing the piece too.

In his spare time (which there isn't much of), Mike plays tennis, and still plays video games. He also enjoys collecting rare 12" singles and music videos from the 80s. In 2002, Mike married his wife, Cynthia. They live in Bellevue.