One particular joy of being in visual fx is working on shots with one of your favourite actors in it. When I worked on the CBC’s 50th anniversary comedy special with Leslie Nelson, I had a delightful lunch with him as well but that’s another story. When I arrived at Mavericks and the first shot assigned involved changing Matt Berry into a bat I was ecstatic.
Bat!
I’d been a big Matt Berry fan since seeing him in the parody rock opera “AD/BC”, Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, Year Of The Rabbit, Snuff Box, Mighty Boosh, The IT Crowd, Toast of Etc. as well as a genuine fan of his music. Another interesting bit of trivia: this was the first job where I was made aware of the necessity of removing any kind of unsolicited logos from gas stations and signage in the shot.
Matt Berry is the greatest talent since Brian Blessed. I think he might actually be Brian Blessed.
Geoff Marshall
Dracula
I read Dracula from cover to cover when I was 11 and spent way too much time in bed thrilling to Bram Stoker’s Gothic meanderings. I never thought that decades later I’d be working on a sublime spoof of the whole genre. it’s not every day you get to help make a satanic goat talk. I still read in bed too much.
Pandemonium
While I was working on these shots and “The Expanse” at Mavericks, we started hearing reports about this mysterious coronavirus that was spreading quickly around the planet. We washed our hands of it and never took it seriously until they sent us home.