Ahhhh Vinnie Jones, legendary nutter. hes doing the rounds again because of some videos for the British Heart Foundation but around half past 2005 I was working at AWC and was working as a video editor. One of our clients at the time was Bosch and they had Bosch blue which is big powertools, they had secured Vinnie Jones to be the face of their big butch man tools for a year and it was nice to work on something which wasn’t Jewson related for a while. The original idea dreamt up called for Vinnie to be using the tools to be building a coffin and if you didn’t use the tools he would put you in it. Mr J was required to turn up at some location for filming and also for photography for the magazines, ads, brochures etc that had been planned. Allegedly he turned up late, demanded toast, swanned around a lot then they got on with it. I can’t confirm this as I didn’t go to the shoot but the creative director and one of the designers (not that i’m mad about it) did. The photographer did a good set of shots but when it came to the video he got out some crappy low cost mini DV cam which was like a home camcorder and no audio gear. As it was shot in some huge hangerlike affair there was a butt load of echo on the tape when I got it and spent most of my time banging my head against the desk while listening to it.

I did a first edit and we originally edited the video without the voice at the end but Bosch said it was too dark and sinister so we added the voice to add some comedy and rather that get someone in or pay for a VO it’s my voice at the end. Yes I star in a video with Vinnie Jones… well star is a bit of a stretch but I’m in it ok. Good enough for me.

Vinnie was becoming famous around this time and X-Men 2 was due out, we had some mad plan at one point to turn up at the premiere wearing Bosch stuff but nothing much happened with that.

What made me thing of this is all the stuff about Vinnie Jones doing the BHF video and I edited a number of BHF videos while at AWC.

Here it is with me at the end in my staring role.

Days cycled to work: 4
Days driven: 0

For the last few weeks I’ve been reading the rather spesh blog of Gavin Rothery and todays posts was a collection of posts about Mars Attacks. Not just the film but the trading cards as well and it reminded me of my days back when I was roaming the country trying to get with companies for work experience while finishing my degree.

One of the companies I contacted was Mackinnon & Saunders based back up in Altrincham outside Manchester, they made a name for themselves producing models for stop motion productions and at the time had worked with Cosgrove Hall creating puppets for ‘Wind in the Willows’. Now they have a huge portfolio of work that includes Bob the builder, Cabbage Patch kids and Mars Attacks but I didn’t know that at the time, I had written to loads of companies trying to get to visit and was invited along to visit their studio back around 96 or 97 and found the chap on the left greeting me just inside the door as I arrived.

I managed to find their funny little building tucked away at the end of a Metrolink tram ride from the centre of Manchester and, being a young and somewhat shy geek in training, I spent ages trying to build up the nerve to knock. I wandered around the road leading up to it for ages and seem to remember a pub and a bridge but I couldn’t swear to it. Anyway, when I finally got up the nerve I was met by a nice bloke who I seem to remember bore a rather scary resemblance to Sam Neill (same eyes, it freaked me out at the time) I can’t remember a name of anyone there but I do remember the inside. It was like a virtual paradise to me. Tools, work benches, more P38 than you could shake a fleet of rusty cars at and some stunning models. There was a bunch of half finished Cabbage Patch dolls puppets being worked on which, at the time, I was a bit annoyed at. I’d managed to get in and I wanted to see stuff like the Sandman which I had seen on one of the channel 4 animation festivals recently but that was just my impatience and wanting to see ‘cool stuff’. Aaaa youth.

Anyway after being guided around by ‘Sam’ I was ushered upstairs and met one half of Mackinnon and Saunders. To this day I have no idea which one it was, i think i was still in shock at the martian downstairs and now I was in a small white room with a dozen or so models and kits around the walls. I remember a Judge Dredd kit and a couple of other puppets from animations but most of my attention was on the man I was talking to. One of the first things he asked me was if I had brought anything to show him and I realised I hadn’t. In my rather stupid naive way I hadn’t brought anything and to this day I regret it. I did talk to him about some ideas I had and one of them was to do with a piece of music I wanted to animate to. After a chat for a while I left but before I did I asked if I could take a picture of the Martian. I was told yes as long as it wasn’t to be used in any magazines or some kinds of work (does the internet count?).

I snapped one photo, said goodbye and shuffled off happily.

**edit** I almost forgot one last thing which was the whole point of this post… As I was talking to ‘Sam’ he told me that they had made a whole load of the martians to be developed as stop motion puppets but at full size. The idea was that Tim Burton was going to do Mars Attacks as stop motion but it all went digital instead thanks to ILM I think. They made around 10-15 full sized (five feet tall) martians but they didn’t get used as stop motion, instead they got shipped over to the States from the UK and got used as dead bodies at the end of the film when the clear up is taking place. ‘Sam’ told me that one of them went missing somewhere between the UK and the USA and that it was probably the only time a martian had been abducted by a human.