Back in the early 00’s (how do you pronounce that?) (awkward innit?) I completely changed my life’s direction, leaving behind a pretty damn successful Medicine degree and deciding to become something else, something that has to do with images. I am not trying to be poetic, I just didn’t know what I wanted or could do for that matter! I wasn’t into movies, I had zero knowledge about art, theatre, design, film, and no one even in my family or in my circle of friends was in any way related to any of that stuff. But I wanted to drop Medicine and be involved in images.
When I was little my parents sent me to learn the piano which as an effect had me hating piano and music altogether. However after a few years I picked up my dad’s guitar and learned how to play on my own, fantasising I was Slash or C.C. DeVille (for those in the know).
While studying Medicine in Hungary I didn’t have others to play with so I bought a Fostex tape 4-track recorder and a primitive drum machine and would record on that. When I learned that you could do that better with a PC, I bought my first PC and a MIDI keyboard that came with version zero (sic) of Cubase.
Apparently I had a great ear for music and even if I never studied it formally, I could listen to it and play it back almost all of the times. My problem with music has always been that I couldn’t create, I couldn’t improvise. If you asked me to play something I would ask you what. And this bothered me.
At some point, I don’t know how, I got my hands at Adobe Premiere version sub-zero and started playing with it. That was it! I knew how to work on a sequencer because of Cubase and when I got my hands on Premiere, I had a 4 minute learning curve and a great revelation. I could be creative with moving image. Finally!
Even though I loved Medicine and all the cool stuff I was learning there, as soon as I got into the hospitals I knew that this was a job that wasn’t made for me, but didn’t know what to do instead, so I kept on going trying to figure it out. When I discovered editing and making little montages out of random crap vacation footage I had an exit strategy. Cross out strategy. I had an exit sign in front of me. So I exited.
At that moment, Lock stock and two smoking barrels came out and then Snatch. I think I don’t have to tell you how much I loved these films especially at the moment I saw them with regards to what was happening inside me! And this is how I got started. Trying to do Guy Ritchie films!
This interview with Joe Rogan is a must see for any lad who wants to learn how to move around as a proper lad. It’s cool Britannia at its core.
Cheers Guy!