How did you start out working in video production?

After 20 years of owning a recording studio I’d had enough. It got to the point where the studio felt like a large elephant hanging round my neck, especially as I had come from a creative music background. Fortunately Andy was glad to take it of my hands and keep it alive, and because of his financial situation he was under no pressure to run it as a commercial facility. In Jan of 1999 my daughter Kiki was born and I found myself taking a long break to look after her. It was during this time that my links with Martin O'Shea my junior business partner, who had begun managing Atomic Kitten, were severed. Unfortunately this was an acrimonious parting and another interesting story in itself.

After about eighteen months of looking after Kiki I awoke one morning and decided to to make films. Rather a strange scenario for someone of my age, but once I put my mind to something, it happens. Fortunately for me the same digital revolution that had happened in music in the mid 80s, that allowed musicians to make music in their bedrooms, was now happening in the film industry. I enrolled at the Arts Centre at Liverpool Community College for two years, and then did an MA at ICDC ( International Centre for Digital Content ) part of John Moores University. Within three months of my decision to enrol, I had made a video for Echo & The Bunnymen, which went on their Live DVD performed at LIPA, and a series of films for a theatre production called Verity Taylor. I set myself a target to make three feature films within the next ten years. The first one is called Addictions, which is a story about an angel who has lost his faith and has to come down to earth to rediscover it, by bringing about a change in five people who are all addicted to different things. I made some shorts along this theme and kept in touch with Andy, meeting up on a couple of occasions to look at my work.

Where did the idea for adding the projection screens for the OMD tour come from?

Towards the end of my MA at ICDC, I had developed the shorts into a feature length script, and was trying to raise money to further develop the project when I approached Andy in Oct 0f 2005. Unfortunately Andy had some cash flow problems but told me he may have some work for me the following year. He then told me of his plans to reform OMD and to tour, and was interested in using back projections. The basis for this being that the spectacle of two guys standing still behind their keyboards for nearly two hours, whilst Andy danced around, would not be very exciting. I think Andy also felt that to reform OMD was a special event, and that giving something new to the many fans that would see the shows was important. I went away and worked on an idea for Electricity, which Andy liked, so we shook hands and I was invited back to work in the Motor Museum. Unfortunately the project could not begin until the following April, but this gave me some time to research the project and to see what other people were doing.

What was the process for creating the visuals? Do you favour any particular software packages?

The process initially involved sitting down with Andy and getting a brief for each song. For example the brief for Talking Loud and Clear was flowers, for So In Love it was the Mexican day of the dead, and for She’s Leaving it was neon lights. It was funny because Andy’s brief for Maid of Orleans was stained glass windows, but I mistakenly applied this to Joan of Arc, which looked great, so we went with that. In real life the stained glass window used for Joan of Arc is actually very small, measuring two feet by one foot six, that came from the Spion Kop in South Africa, and now lives in the church of St Peter & St Paul, in Warsop, near Nottingham in which is listed in the doomsday book. The other angel images used in Joan of Arc also come from this church. After a while I realised what a great honour it was to be creating images and visuals for songs that millions of people had already heard and loved, so it was with great enthusiasm and respect that the films were created.

When I needed to source original footage such as the church in Maid, the flowers in TLC, or the sea in Sealand, I would shoot on a Sony Z1E which is a budget hi-def camera. All the other images were computer generated, or sourced through the internet, and worked on at a hi def rate. The actual editing software was Final Cut Pro, used alongside other packages like Motion, Arkaos, Particle Illusion, Photoshop, and After Effects. It was very much like painting a picture , the hardest part was getting the concept right and putting down the first outline brush strokes. Some things were created with one package, then put into another then finally brought into Final Cut to edit. For example in Georgia images were compiled in Photoshop then put into Arkaos or Motion, to create movement, then edited in Final Cut. It was very much an experimental approach that was taken with creating most of the images. When I had a rough cut Andy would pop in and have a look, giving suggestions and feedback. The main concept that developed early on was to avoid too much fast movement, because Andy was always concerned that the images may detract from the band onstage.

Another project that began a month after starting work on the backdrops was The Energy Suite. Peter Saville had contacted Andy about an art installation suggesting Stanlow, but as Andy had already covered this subject, he came up with the idea of an installation about power generating sites. I was invited to join the project and spent a lot of the summer of 2006 traveling up and down the coast with Andy researching Power stations. From Heysham which is a nuclear station up north near Lancaster, to Dinorwig which is in Llanberis in Wales, the stations form an arc around the Irish Sea. It was fortunate that a lot of the managers of the power stations were big OMD fans so that helped a lot with gaining access to film. Andy in collaboration with Stuart Kershaw has written five orchestral pieces incorporating sounds recorded at the power stations. I have finished the five main films and have been meeting with Peter Saville to tweak the edits before working on variations of the films, which will be shown on a tryptich of smaller screens to the side of the main large screen. This installation will take place in FACT Liverpool from the 12th December 2008 until the 12th February 2009.

One of the images from Heysham and some of the out takes from Point of Ayr were actually used in the film backdrop for Architecture and Morality, along with some photographs that Innes Marlow, an OMD fan, had offered for use from his portfolio.

"I was invited to join the project and spent a lot of the summer of 2006 traveling up and down the coast with Andy researching Power stations"

(Forever) Live and Die was one of the few songs that had no brief. So I used one of Innes’s photographs, already used in Architecture & Morality, and messed it up to such an extent that even he did not recognise it. I think this is one of my favourites because the whole film is made from one image. Towards the end of making the films for the tour I needed to use some 3D imagery, so fortunately I met Nathalie G whilst getting some lunch in the Lane one day. I had not seen Nathalie for many years, so when she told me that she had moved from photography to creating 3D imagery, we arranged to hook up and look at her work, which I liked. So some of her work appears in Sailing On the Seven Seas, Locomotion, and Walking On the Milky Way.

Are you happy with how the visuals turned out for the live shows?

I had only seen the films on a computer screen, when Andy returned one day after visiting CTS and seeing some of the films on a Mitrix screen. He was blown away, but it wasn’t until Andy and I had traveled down to XL three months later to make a final decision on the type of screen to use that I was able to see the films on a large screen. We had gone down with Gary Hodgson who was operating the onstage computers, and the Hippotiser, which was the server that was storing all the films for the projections. It was quite stunning, but it was only when I saw the films at the first show with a live audience in Dublin, that I felt that I had done my job, and was amazed to hear people talking about the films in the audience. Although this was the first time I had done something like this, I feel it has been a great success and has certainly taken the OMD show to a new and exciting level. I feel respect has to be given to Andy for taking the risk and having the vision to do this, against the advice of his management and accountants. I guess he could have just gone out with the standard light show played the shows and taken the money, but I feel by doing this he has shown that once again OMD are at the cutting edge of performance art, and have created a great platform on which to continue their musical career.

"I feel it has been a great success and has certainly taken the OMD show to a new and exciting level"

You’re working on the live DVD, what approach do you take to make the footage look visually interesting and also convey the excitement of a live concert?

I think that anyone who attended the concerts will agree that the visuals were an integral part of the show. I feel to convey what was seen at the shows, it is important to treat the concert as an Art Electronic Pop performance rather than a rock performance. I think the original edit has tried to portray OMD in a formulaic rock and roll fashion. OMD as we all know are not a rock band, so to cut the show that way is to misrepresent what was performed. I have so far edited Maid of Orleans and New Stone Age by cutting between the films and the live show, and both Andy and I feel it works very well, although there are some discussions going on as to when the edit will be completed.

What music do you listen to these days?

At the moment I am into Arcade Fire, Sigur Ros, and The Killers who I also want to do projections for.

More recently, Hambi has been working on a series of Mandalas, digital moving images which have been exhibited in amongst other places Princes Ave (open air on huge screens), the Bluecoat and the Fact. Stuart Kershaw composed the music for two of the Mandalas and Hambi is also looking to create one for the 2012 London Olympics.

"I have completed two Mandalas which Stuart Kershaw composed the music for and I am looking to create one for the London Olympics. I will initially be doing a pilot using the athletes that have returned from Bejing, then hopefully a huge one with all of the UK athletes that will be competing in 2012."

Click on the thumbnails below to see sample images of Hambi's Mandala work.