Martyn is 34 years old, married, with no biological children. He lives in Surrey with his wife, and is in the process of adopting a child from China.
Prior to his current profession, Martyn wanted to work for the Jim Henson Creature Shop specialising in the animatronic computer systems for controlling puppets. He got in touch with the Creature Shop back in the early nineties while he was still at secondary school to arrange for work experience, but sadly before he could get an interview with Neal Scanlan who headed the animatronics department at the time, the Creature Shop had taken on an enormous amount of work which meant that any work experience would be impractical. Ten years later, things would take an ironic twist. In the mean time, Martyn busied himself with programming and developed a small scale email system for his GCSE computer studies course. He obtained Distinctions across the board for his BTEC National Diploma and attended the University of East Anglia although left after two years to start working with Internet technology. During his time at the UEA he provided consultancy (through his father’s line of work) for the National Insurance Company of Sierra Leone with regards to wireless networking (prior to the broad uptake of wireless technology we take for granted today).
Overall, Martyn has over 14 years commercial experience with Internet related technologies. Starting in 1996, he was the technical manager, systems administrator, web designer, technical support and PC troubleshooter for a Norwich-based ISP – single-handedly running all the systems for just over a year before heading to a bigger ISP (also in Norwich) as support manager and systems administrator. Having been made redundant due to the company relocating to deepest Norfolk, Martyn went to work for Ision Internet in London, which was a national ISP and web hosting company. It brought the world the NDO brand, which Martyn took under his wing and semi-managed for two years (making sure people didn’t abuse the free .uk domain name and/or the revenue system that was funding the operation of NDO) before leaving to work for a Kingston-upon-Thames web design firm as a systems administrator. After being made redundant from there (for the firm to relocate to deepest Essex), Martyn moved into the film industry.
Between 2002 and 2008, Martyn worked at The Moving Picture Company, a prestigious and multi-award winning (BAFTAs, Emmys, and other media industry awards) post-production house in Soho, London, specialising in the complex production system infrastructure required for high-end film, television and promo/commercial projects. These include the Harry Potter series, Terry Pratchett’s live action adaptations of Hogfather and The Colour of Magic, the Tomb Raider series, the James Bond series, and many more besides. He liaised with major film studios and clients to ensure that work was delivered to a very high standard. Martyn has worked on 42 major feature films and television productions at the time of leaving the company (although only received one official film credit). The most recent project is the forthcoming Wolfman from Universal Pictures. It was during his stint at MPC when the Jim Henson Creature Shop in London closed down.
Outside of work, his interest in films and film-making extended to attending the world premiere of Peter Jackson’s King Kong in New York City. He was invited along to Neil Gaiman’s own personal private screening back in June of 2007. He has also interviewed Jane Goldman about her work on adapting Stardust for cinema.
After leaving MPC, Martyn spent six months working for a specialist software developer that produces high-end visual effects hardware and software architecture for the film and television industry. He was also responsible for producing and filming the company’s promotional video for NAB show in Las Vegas that involved travelling around the US and Europe interviewing prominent members of the visual effects community.
Unfortunately Martyn was made redundant shortly after (90% of the work force laid off!) but is now happily working for Memset Dedicated Hosting as a systems administrator providing hosting and support for clients including Private Eye magazine, KFC, Hilton Hotels and the RSPCA.
He still has a very keen interest in film production – both technical and logistical, especially in regards to digital cinematography, post-production and work-flow.
Martyn has also written several commentaries and letters to the broadcast industry regarding various issues, and actively campaigns to try to ensure that engineering teams are properly credited for their work on feature films.
Martyn does not own a TV (also see this Sunday Times article about me and my TV habits – although the article takes a lot of what I’ve said waaaaay out of context. The Times has yet to allow me a right to reply to that article).
Martyn is a former Top Contributor/Power Poster on the Google Apps Help Forums, but voluntarily left as he growing increasingly concerned over various aspects of Google Apps. That said, he still uses Google Apps himself and continues to contribute to the forums in the hope that the points he has raised will be improve the service.
