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MARTIN EDMONDSON
Creating an award-winning computer game saw a childhood dream come true for Martin Edmondson. Edmondson’s bestselling Driver game scooped BAFTA’s Interactive Technology award in 1999, prompting him to throw a huge celebration bash for his design company staff.
“We had a massive party in London and the James Taylor Quartet, famous for the Starsky And Hutch theme, played and even Huggy Bear got up on stage with the band,” laughed Edmonson, head of Gateshead-based Reflections Interactive.
“It was a strange experience watch- ing him because when I was young, Starsky And Hutch was on telly quite late, so my treat was to be allowed to watch the opening sequence with the car chase. And there I was, partying with some of my childhood heroes.”
Driver sees the player take on the guise of an undercover cop who must become a getaway driver, streaking through the streets of Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. The game became a runaway classic, selling more than three million copies worldwide to become the best-selling game in Europe and the US in 1999.
But speed demon Edmondson, 32, is about to overtake his own blockbuster creation with a sequel - Driver 2, this time set in South America - which thanks to some amazing graphics could well be vying for another BAFTA next year.
Advance orders for the game in the US, where it was released in November, topped one million, which meant it grossed an awesome $50m on retail day one. ■ Coreena Ford
MIGUEL SAPOCHNICK
My mother took me to the cinema when I was three because she want- ed me to shut up,” remembers 26- year-old writer/director Miguel Sapochnik about his first movie experience.
“We sat down, she gave me an ice- cream and then in the middle of the movie, she looked over at me and I was sitting there mesmerised by the screen. My ice- cream had melted all down my hand.”
If a child’s prepared to neglect his 99 flake, it’s pretty obvious he’s hooked. That was the case for London-born and bred Sapochnik, whose name comes from his Ukranian-Argentinian heritage.
After dithering over art school, he headed into film-making via storyboard- ing, working on movies like A Life Less Ordinary, and finding a mentor in Scots director Gillies Mackinnon.
“Storyboarding was my inroad into directing,” Sapochnik says, “because you’re the only one that gets to work with a director in terms of what they’re going to be doing on the directing front. It was also a way to keep up my drawing, because I get very twitchy if I don’t have a pencil in my hand.”
Soon though, he’d be going onto big- ger things – and after a meeting with sea- soned British producer Ivor Powell, Sapochnik began co-writing his own mate- rial. The result was the recently-complet- ed The Dreamer, a fifteen-minute sci-fi short about cloning.
Since then, Sapochnik - who has long term feature plans with Powell through their Sun Dance Films production compa- ny - has since moved onto his next pro- ject... and he’s going all the way to Hollywood to do it. Written by William Boyd, it’s another short called The Care And Attention Of Swimming Pools.
“The nice thing has been that a third of the crew from The Dreamer have said they’ll come out to L.A. and make it. And,” laughs Sapochnik, “they said they’d
pay for themselves.”
So can we expect another sci- fi flick? He shakes his head. “It’s the antithesis of The Dreamer. It’s kind of like The Big Lebowski meets The Swimmer.” ■ Ben Irving.
CORAL LAWSON
Most people are happy with one job – Coral Lawson has three. The 23- year-old Hertfordshire girl is cur- rently producing a trio of shows on Carlton Cinema – one of the network’s digital channels. All film-related, the most cutting edge is Get The Picture, a movie show for the deaf community.
“It’s my baby,” she admits about the programme, which went to air last November. “My boss gave me it to devel- op. Everything that’s done on it is mine – from commissioning the graphics to find- ing the presenter.”
It’s a tall order, but Lawson has had firm grounding, after landing a plum posi- tion on the Carlton Graduate Training Scheme, SHIFT. With the network expand- ing its digital slate, Lawson quickly found her niche.
To the question of viewer numbers, or the lack of them, currently being enjoyed by Britain’s digital service, she says, “I don’t really think about it.”
Laughing, she says, “we were very happy this week because we had three entries in our competition, which shows a lot more peo-
ple are watching it,”
then adds, “and it’s exciting to be a part of it.”
Her job also spawned romance. “One of the researchers is Tim, my boyfriend,” she reveals. But is he happy being bossed around by his girlfriend at work?
“We get on great at work,” she says, “although if he does something wrong and I have to tell him that it’s wrong, he does- n’t like it very much.” She giggles: “Because it’s me, it’s all ‘oh, you’re being so patronising!’” ■ Ben Irving
Photos from top: Coral Lawson,
Martin Edmondson and Miguel Sapochnick
TALENTSPOTTING
FOCUSING ON TOMORROW’S GENERATION OF MOVERS AND SHAKERS
New Talent, New Media
TALENTSPOTTING
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