Born on the 26th of July 1977 sharing my birthday with two of my heroes Stanley Kubrick and Mick Jagger I crashed into the world as a sick and exhausted infant.

As soon as I could ask for money to rent films I was bothering both my parents for cash to rent the latest action or comedy. Through my father and his love of a good story, even better a great story teller I soon developed a taste in cinema and began my ongoing search for great entertainment.

With a love of film and photography soon came my first connection with cameras, technology, writing and acting. My dad got me my first camera which was an 8mm cine that was just too expensive to use as much as I wanted. Soon video tape became the obvious answer to my problem, after rebuilding several VCR’s making me familiar with their design and creating animation on my Spectrum 48k and afterwards an Amiga I got my first VHS camera. It was like a whole new world had opened up to me, still into my animation I decided to base my GCSE art exam on 2D computer animation and put my all into completing my final project on time. What I didn’t know was at the time animation was not covered by the curriculum and even though I was one of the stronger artists in my class/year I received an F as 99% of my work was animation.

Not put off I sat a year long art foundation course to get my grade and moved on to graphic design fearing my dreams of being a film maker from a small English town to be impossible and now was the time to get a trade.

Passing this course bored as it never really challenged me I dived back into animation after moving to Scotland. Studying with in my opinion a great man named Mike Campbell who had worked in the industry on such films as Bladerunner and Alien. Eger to move on I finished before anyone else and was chosen to edit the years show reel. Sat in front of that editing sweet was the start of editing for me a skill and love I am thankful I have found.

Once I moved to Edinburgh and studied animation at the EAC I soon built my first real PC and began shooting and editing digital video. This was an expensive hobby and I was desperate to find a way to pay for food, school and video kit doing something the progressed my love of the moving image instead of a job that got in the way of it. With the growing development of visual software I began creating a library of media and started topsoilproject triggering live visuals for club nights and events. With limited competition things soon snowballed and I had more work than I could deal with. Even with so much work I felt the ideal situation was to have one or two select residencies to ensure a steady stream of work in the future.

Soon enough along came Access and soon after Xplicit, while guaranteed work at these clubs my art college course ended and I found myself once again on the look for a job to advance my situation. After building a custom nitro RC car I became friends with an employee of Rockstar North Games. He provided me an opportunity to focus test the up and coming Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, soon after I had my focus testing contract upgraded to a temporary staff contract which was extended several times before being made a permanent member of staff at Rockstar.

With a keen interest in skateboarding since I was 11 and with my love of filming I soon ended up with a decade of footage which I began editing down with the original plan of producing a DVD to give to my friends as a Christmas gift. Soon after TIME’s completion it became clear that there were many others interested in this project as well as my close friends. After gaining a glowing review in Europe’s biggest skateboard magazine Sidewalk Surfer and premiering at Edinburgh’s Film & Funk night this project has continuously surprised me year after year.

At present I am working on a project called ThreeSidedSquare, about Edinburgh’s 20 year struggle to have a skate park built in the city centre. With interviews, new skate footage and archived material this has been a real test of time management and research. Even though this production is being produced in HD all equipment has been sourced and all funding is my own so I can feel free to tell the story how I see it and not worry about upsetting investors.

Since I met my wife to be I have been planning to move to the US, with no job lined up and limited savings things won’t be easy but that hasn’t dampened my enthusiasm. I’m looking forward to easing my damaged old joints in the warmth and feeding my vitamin D deprived mind with some good old fashioned Californian style sunshine.