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Name: Alex Gingell
Website: Horsie Hedge (currently offline)
Yo, I got a PM from Lucy asking for some information on myself,
and the various stuff I've done with the dudes from FS. I'm kinda
gonna use PK'sone as a template cos I've gotta bust this out schnell!
(famous last words as I rant on for 30mins).
The story starts when I went to secondary school (at 13) here
in England.
Our boarding house was a pretty tight knit community which didn't
really mix too much with the rest of the school, and most of the
dudes there were a pretty cool and interesting mixture.. full
of character. We had a cool basement in our house which had a
music practice room, and another large area which we would turn
into Deathmatch central (this was in the era of DOOM 2 LAN DM)
on the weekends.
All the music equipment down there was pretty much due to the
exploits of Carl Bown and D, who were in a death metal band at
the time (Infliction).
They practiced with another guy in the house who played drums,
and they would regularly play rock concerts and tear shit up.
Later I learned drums on that same kit, and 10 years later I'm
still playing and have 2 kits I love and not enough time to practice
:O.
Anyway, D, HJ, Carl Bown and the rest of their year were in the
year above me so I didn't socialise too much with them in the
beginning, as I was spending too much time getting beaten up by
the other members of their year. But I saw them around a lot and
they were the mac daddy's, always on the hot tip.
I was a pretty quiet, studious dude who worked a lot and played
sports, and these guys were mostly renegades who hung out, played
blackjack and listened to old school metal with a bottle of jack
on the shelf and porn in the trunk.
I don't really remember one particular instance of meeting Dan
but I think it was kind of like we found a common orbit because
of our interests. We both got into designing levels for Doom 2
as a result of the coke fueled DM insanity going on in the basements
with like 15 people 2 computers and 30 large pizzas from pizza
the action and some YUM YUM Chinese. We kind of designed on our
own for a while, sharing tips and checking out each others levels.
About this time PK's year arrived at the house, and I gradually
met pk more and more through D and general hanging about (actually
the first meeting of pk and me I was hitting him with a hockey
stick but that's another story and we patched that up and have
been bros ever since :) ).
Anyway, Quake 1 got released and D and me decided to get serious
and make a mission pack for it. This is when we really started
to work together, and D, me and 2 friends (but mostly d and me
lol) made Death's Dominion for Quake 1, which I'm sure is still
out there on the net somewhere. Interestingly we managed to show
it to some of the industry leaders in level design at the time,
and years later we would actually meet and work with them for
real (and D forfilled his promise of buying levelord a beer)!!
Little did we know. Anyway, gradually D was corrupting me, and
I managed to scam my way out of sports for the entire year (you
tell the badminton people you're doing swimming,and the swimming
people you're doing badminton...you get a sick note the first
couple of times to make sure you have an excuse if they come looking
for you, and then if things are good you're free!), which I had
become disillusioned with because of being lied to by the rugby
coach (suck one). So I pretty much hid during sports time and
worked on maps with D, who, being a badass had been scamming his
way out of sport since they discovered coco pops.
PK was a really crazy dude who liked the wig juice, and was insane
for DBZ. He dug our editing technique and constantly was on our
topic asking for tips on how to get started in level design. Half
life came out and I remember him making some small test maps and
stuff like that. About that time I met Al W who seemed like a
quiet sort of dude.
We occasionally met in PK's study for some hardcore Tony Hawk
on the PS1...you know I got the high score skilllz to this day
yo! Anyway Al was a talented musician who also played at school
rock concerts and would jam in our basement with some other dudes
from PK's year. In fact pk was actually the drummer for their
band, and blader (charlie h the photographer dude) sometimes played
drums too. Did you know that we all play drums lol?
Now it's probably around november 5th in '96 or '97 and we are
all going apeshit for fireworks. It's not enough to just let them
off, we had to experiment to see how to make them explode.. BIGGER.
For a short while D and I were a frenzied duo, concentrating
unusually hard in chemistry, and hoarding all the fireworks we
could so we could cut them up and make BIGGER ones. Early attempts
failed due to poor container design, but gradually our technique
saw improvement. Squash balls injected with
rocket powder are excellent for creating spark showers. Making
bombs with skateboard wheels is not a path to success. Small screw
top bottles are awesome. Tennis balls packed with match heads
and wrapped with duct tape...time consuming, dangerous and not
impressive so don't bother.
Then finally I walked into D's room one morning to find him hunched
over something. He showed me a half constructed pipe bomb which
we duly finished and then that night went out into the middle
of the empty playing field outside our boarding house. We only
had a ridiculously small fuse and I was the only one crazy enough
to light that sucker and run like a half beaten
to death stoat on jolt cola. It was BIG, fuck me it was big. A
sound like THWOMP, earth shattering, the ground shook and there
was a huge flame like 15 ft high.
Other guys and girls were following our exploits by this point
and a crowd of 15 or so people ran w00ping and laughing away from
the scene. Lol, I have no idea why we thought we could keep our
experiments secret.
Later on we learnt the nearby hospital rang our housemaster and
asked if any gas tanks had exploded or if someone had been shot
- did they need any ambulances? Yikes.
Suffice to say production was steaming on pipe bomb #2, when
our housemaster at the time popped his head round Dan's study
door and looked at me, mallet in hand crushing rocket powder,
and Dan with a 7 inch knife cutting stuff up, and called dan out.
I'll never know to this day why I didn't even have another word
said to me about the whole thing - either it was because I was
a star
pupil they didn't want to lose, or Dan took all the blame on himself.
But
Dan went to the Deputy head (who was a complete dude in those
days) and argued himself out of expulsion. I took the second pipe
bomb home and let it rip in a field... it wasn't as good as at
night time.
So that was the end of that chapter. To this DAY every time I
think of those pipebombs I thank the lord that no-one got hurt.
For fucks sake no-one even think about trying it, those were time
when our passion for building things and seeing pyrotechnics completely
outweighed our common sense and neither of us would try making
bombs that serious again.
Righty tighty, so now it's like '99 or so. We made it through
GCSE's whilst working on DD, and now during A-levels we're hard
at work on our most ambitious project to date: Oblivion for Quake
2, complete mission pack.
http://www.planetquake.com/lethargy/ try it out :).
By now I'm completely corrupted, and the alcohol fuelled craziness
is at its peak. I really miss all the night time commando
missions, secret trips to the pub, clubs and general rule-breaking
for the sake of it. Since I left the oppression of school I haven't
really been bothered to do anything like what we did back there,
since no-one is trying to stop us :). Our little boy is
all growns up!
Anyway here's where the dudes are really a tight unit, just at
the end of school. D leaves and goes to do a design degree in
london. I stay on for my final year and just get my head down
and work. During thistime PK and I become much better friends.
It's funny but I always got on way better with the year above
me (D's year) and the year below me (PK's) then I ever did with
my own year. One funny story from this period is me and a friend
breaking out of the house to go to the pub. Our assistant housemaster
saw us, thought we were thieves, and promptly shouted "Stop
Thieves!" and chased us lol!. We split up and I immediately
ran round the house and broke straight back in later Karl got
back in too. The assistant hm was hailed as a hero for
chasing thieves away for months!!! We knew the truth and later
let the real story be known just as we left school.
So I left Rugby, and went to Oxford to do a chemistry degree.
In the hols D and I finally got into the games industry for real,
working at EA on Q3: Revolution for PS2. In the next summmer hols
we went to Texas to work on CS: Condition Zero at Gearbox...cue
craziness and shooting machine guns at good old texan gun ranges.
D stayed out there while I went back to finish my degree.
About this time we really reconnected with HJ, who had been off
doing art, and PK who was now in London doing his design degree.
This is really the start of the current time. Me PK HJ and D became
a tight knit crew, HJ was living with D at the time, and always
the creative souls we turned our attention to the world of filmmaking.
Over the next few years we would make lots of little shorts, mostly
played for laughs, or documenting our lives, so that we could
learn all aspects of filmmaking. We founded horsie in the hedge
cinema whilst zoned on coca-cola and rotoscoping light sabers
for an entire week.
Anyway about then D got the call from Al W to try out for Fightstar.
He got the gig, and called on me to film an early rehearsal session
(I bet you'd like to see that footage huh? I will try to put it
on the FS DVD). About now I finished finals and started my 4th
year of research - less time consuming and mentally exhausting
than Part I of the degree. I was so mentally burned out from 3
years of extreme thinking, I wanted my next goal in life to be
purely physical, so I thought fuck it, why not try and see what
I can do with my body? You always hear how the body is the most
wonderful gift you'll ever get so I resolved to find out how far
I could push myself physically, specifically how strong, how arnie-like
I could naturally get, but also I wanted to be healthier after
21 years of coca-cola and pizza. Cue a painful year of not eating
enough and learning that most of what I knew about nutrition was
total bullshit. Lost 10lb, down to 163lb. Ironically here I find
out that bodybuilding is almost 100% mental, and laugh at how
I wanted nothing mentally trying...fuck it I challenged myself
and there's no turning back.
So I finish my 4th year, done with Oxford. I planned to take
6 months off where, thanks to Dan's position in the band (and
the
power of Charlie and his connections - you rule dude ;) ) we had
the power to direct and design FS's videos ourselves and add
more credentials to our name, whilst preserving the bands complete
creative control. During those 6 months off I lived with Dan
and worked on the fs video 24/7 (only breaking to eat, hit the
gym, sleep and buy more food, as I finally mastered my healthier
lifestyle and set about putting back on some weight. 8 months
later and we had 3 videos made (Palahniuk's laughter, Laruso's
Falling Apart and another video for Tokyo Dragons - all made it
to Music TV), and I was 44lb heavier (30lb in those 6 months)
at 206lb lol, but not from fat hehe.
Anyway, then I went of to South Africa on holiday while all the
FS craziness broke. I came back and another FS video was on the
cards. Now I was supposed to be heading back to Oxford to start
a PHD in physical and theoretical chemistry, but I got an extention
to make my break 8 months long, went back to London and worked
on Paint Your Target.
After that I headed back to Oxford and started my phd where I
now sit typing this spiel.
The future is extremely bright, I am very happy to see PK developing
at great speed in the VFX world, he has recently got a job
at Moving Picture Company here in the UK. Fightstar are a very
talented band imo, and as far as I can see can only succeed even
more with time. Personally, I am honing my skills in all areas
of visual effects in tandem with my work on the phd, and at the
moment see myself heading in the vfx/filmmaking direction after
all is said and done. HJ, D, PK and me continue to build horsie
in the hedge cinema all the time and hope to make it a big and
successful company in the future, as we write feature films and
develop skills in all areas.
If you've read this far, shouldn't you really have something
better to do?
PEACE!
Al G
I would like to give Alex a big Thanks for providing me with
a mass of great info for this page - thanks Alex your a star!
:-)
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