Interview with David Marsh
Nelson ’79-‘84

What did you do when you left RHS?
I left RHS in 1984 after my O’Levels. The plan was always to return to RHS for my A levels but things changed during the Summer break, I ended up studying for my A levels near my home in Surrey. In fact the following Summer things changed again. I saw a job advertised for a trainee in this high tech, state-of-the-art computer room. To me it looked like the bridge of the Enterprise and for its day it really was very advanced. I applied, got the job and started a career in computers that took me to the City of London working for the largest merchant banks. I ended up supporting systems running the stock exchange!

Then what did you do?
I’ve always loved films and I remember sitting in screen one at the Empire, Leicester Square, watching Jurassic Park with my now wife thinking I’d love to do that. I did a lot of research and the more I found out the more I became interested in trying to move into visual effects for television and film. 3D was in its real infancy in London and the USA was well ahead of the game with Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) leading the field by a mile. I did a week’s course in Softimage 3D in London and found I had a strong aptitude for it. I quit my job and sent myself to Canada for three months to study all aspects of Softimage 3D. Softimage was the 3D software; it still exists today but in a new form.

 

When I returned to London I immediately got a job actually working for Softimage in London. I worked as support to the then growing 3D community and did demos at trade shows. It was around this time that 3D was really taking off. I spent two years at Softimage and during that time things really exploded exponentially. 3D was a mainstream technology and everyone knew about it.

Eventually I decided it was time to move into production and gave my first choice a call. I basically called the head of 3D at Framestore in London and asked if they were looking for 3D artists. One month later I joined Framestore as a Technical Director on this brave new project which people outside the company said could not be done. History was truly about to be made and the series, which was for the BBC, was called Walking With Dinosaurs. The series was huge and won every award going. I ended up a supervisor on the project and I won a Prime Time Emmy award for my work on the show under the Outstanding Visual Effects category.

My fascination with things like Star Wars and big feature films led me to America. I saw ILM was advertising and they were visiting London. I applied, they called, we met and I left the interview room, which was a room in a hotel, with a job offer. I remember arriving home and telling my
wife that ILM would like me to go and work on Star Wars.

I am now Supervising Technical Director at ILM. I basically assemble and make the final shots that you see on the big or small screen. All components are added together and lit to make them blend with the live action to hopefully look photo real. There is so much to it that I could literally talk for days about it. Most of those initial close-ups of Davey Jones (Pirates of the Caribbean 2) on the boat were done by me. My brief from the Director, Gore Verbinski, was to scare the kids. So I did my best to introduce a creepy, squidgy feel to those close-ups and used a lot of blue and moonlight.

Every show is different though. I’ve recently completed supervising a group of sequences for Transformers 2. I’d go home with a headache after that show, especially when trying to put together a 30 second shot of Optimus powering up with all of Jetfire’s components or having to work out sequence lighting for all of the Director, Michael Bay’s, camera positions for a scene he was shooting right when the sun was setting. Michael likes making things difficult for us but he does have an amazing eye.

What is a typical day like?
There is no such thing as a typical day really. You might find yourself being yelled at over the intercom to get back to Stage B as they are ready to go again. You run back, get behind the safety curtain, watch ten screens all at once, stick your fingers in your ears and feel the pressure in the room change as a bunch of seriously large explosions go off destroying the fan towers from Michael
Bay’s The Island. You then hear the pyro folks giggle as they exclaim that they may have used just a little too much explosive on that one. We’re sure we saw the stage roof lift on that one and only one camera got destroyed.

 

I’ve seen a lot of crazy and interesting stuff. One night they had to blow up a windmill for Van Helsing, after the explosion we could hear car alarms going off for miles. It’s funny how it’s all the explosion events that stick in your mind the most. During Pearl Harbor, which went on for months, there would be a loud explosion on Windward Stage (over the intercom system), then a boom and everything would shake and rattle. If they said, "really loud bang”, you knew to hold on to your desk, literally.

 

Basically anything can happen here and it usually does.

Do you meet lots of interesting people?
I’m not traditionally on set but am back in the office as a sequence supervisor but I do get to meet directors like Spielberg and Bay and George is often around. Then there are always moments that make you pause and look back as to what just passed or happened. I was rushing back from lunch one day with a sandwich and a drink and this chap stretched out and pulled the door open for me. He was tall, I thought! Looking back, I realized it was Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca).

What was your favourite film to work on?
Ohh boy that’s so hard to answer and I think my answer is constantly changing. I’m very proud of my Davey Jones work on Pirates 2 and that was a real quality film. It was great to work on hero Yoda shots - I kind of had to get that out of my system. The Island, though not a box office smash was a lot of fun. It was my first Michael Bay movie and I’d never seen so much destruction in my life. However, if you ask my daughter the same question she would say Peter Pan as she is dead
impressed I got to work with Tinkerbell. I came home from work one day and my wife told her that I’d been working with Tinkerbell. She literally ran at me and jumped into my arms and nearly squeezed me to death.

 

What is the best bit about your job?
The best bit about my job is getting a little bit of ‘you’ on the screen. There’s so much to it these  days, with so many people involved but when you get something you wanted on the screen it’s really nice. Oh, I did a beauty shot of the Enterprise for the recent Star Trek movie. That gave me goose bumps when I saw that on the screen recently.

How would a pupil get into the visual effects industry now?
This industry has leaped forward in the last fifteen years. To think that every college and university now offers courses in every aspect of computer graphics and visual effects is astonishing to me. It was only fifteen years ago that I took the first ever one week 3D course to be held in London. Now people can go straight into the industry from school or college and work anywhere in the world in television, games, commercials, music videos and film. It’s really amazing.