Now I’m officially twice as old as many of my younger colleagues in the industry, it makes me nostalgic for the olden days. Sorry, can’t help it.
I first started work at Pinewood studios in March 1994 working for the lovely Bob Keen at Image Animation. He really gave me the most amazing start in the industry even though I was usually too stressed and exhausted to appreciate it. The number of nights I slept in that spooky old workshop…
I used to run the CG side, whilst my very talented colleagues worked next door creating the make-up and animatronics effects.
Prior to then, I was a computer programmer with aspirations to be an animatronics engineer. Sadly, I was neither a good engineer or a good sculptor, so it was never really going to be. Luckily I had the good fortune to meet Duncan Jarman who, last year, just missed out on winning the make-up oscar for ‘The Revenant’ *cough robbed*.
I used to write a very geeky fanzine called ‘FX’ with a friend of mine from Cannock, Ade Cattell. We wrote an article on Duncan and another mutual friend, Alex Chandon, who were in the midst of making a low-budget horror film. Soon after, I was posted to America to work on a software project for Reuters. In the meantime, Duncan’s exceptional talents were noticed and he went to work at Image Animation. For those of you familiar with the ‘Hellrasier’ movies, Bob Keen’s Image Animation were the creators of Pinhead. It was there that I met and worked with another amazing make-up artist, Shaune Harrison, who now runs his own make-up academy. It was Shaune who turned me into this delightful chap…
In my downtime at Reuters, I worked on personal projects: software for a long-gestating computer control system for animatronics, plus I also dabbled with some animations using a very early 3D graphics program called 3D Studio. Fancy that.
When I got back to England, Duncan was kind enough to set up a meeting with me and Bob so I could show off my software system. Bob was extremely gracious, but it was obvious that my amateurish offering was not going to cut it. Over lunch, we got onto the subject of computers, a subject that I could bore Bob with for hours. It transpired that he had just bought a high spec computer system to do pre-visualisation for the make-up and creature side of the business.
Bob was eager to embrace the new technology, so picked my brains on the specifications of the set-up that he was waiting to be delivered. One of the pieces of kit was a copy of 3D studio. ‘I’ve been using that’, I boasted. Those few words changed my life.
Once the kit had arrived, Bob rang me and invited me to work as their tech. guy. Within a few weeks I was doing pre-vis for the film, ‘Judge Dredd’. Within two years I was 2D supe. on the film ‘Prince Valiant’. If you have ever sat through the films FX, you will understand the phrase, ‘Too much, too soon’. Thankfully, I did improve, eventually.
More ramblings to come.
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