Digital Dynamo

Liam, 50, the new director of the Arts Institute's School of Media, came to the Wallisdown campus after five years at Industrial Light and Magic, movie maker George Lucas's ground-breaking special-effects company.

With a background in computer animation, landing a job at the company responsible for many of the major advances in digital film-making techniques in the past two decades was like a dream come true for Liam.

"It was a wonderful experience in every way," he says. "I was offered the job out there, but it came at a bad time domestically in that my wife had only just started a teaching job, so I had to commute!"

As Technical Area Leader, then Manager of Research and Development Directors at ILM, Liam worked on some 48 major movies including blockbusters like Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, The Mummy, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Perfect Storm, The Green Mile, Pearl Harbor, Jurassic Park III and Saving Private Ryan.

The job put him at the keenest cutting edge of computer animation and he was also involved in one of this year's most eagerly awaited film releases - Stars Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones - but don't bother asking him anything about it as he's sworn to absolute secrecy.

"There are all kinds of non-disclosure agreements, and understandably so. It's a very competitive business and film makers don't often want plots released ahead of the film, not least because it spoils it for the audience.

"The process is so sophisticated these days that film makers only need be limited by their imagination. Obviously cost and expertise will always come into play, but if the money is at your disposal then you can do almost anything on the screen."

It is getting more and more difficult to impress increasingly sophisticated audiences with new special effects. We've seen dinosaurs brought back to life, humans melt into metallic liquid and whole planets explode before our very eyes.

Aliens come and go as a matter of routine and all manner of strange things have been done to the human body.

Special-effects innovation has regularly been used as a selling point for films, but there have been times when films have felt like effects shows rather than

great stories as the process got in the way of the art.

"It is possibly true that it has done in the past, but the technology is becoming more and more transparent - even the experts sometimes struggle to see the digital content.

"With more and more films being shot digitally as well, there are whole movies where nothing you see actually exists outside a computer.

"It also means the storytelling can be realised safely in that the demands you have to place on stuntmen are considerably less than they would have been. Nearly all the severe storm scenes in Perfect Storm were digital."

Even away from the intensity of Hollywood, in the relatively relaxed confines of Skywalker Ranch, ILM's northern-California base, the movie business is notoriously hard. It's big business. Hard-nosed. Cut-throat, ruthless, rich and glamorous.

We know it is, because it tells us it is. When you're involved in it at a high level it must be difficult at times to keep some perspective on it. It's only entertainment after all.

"Sometimes it's difficult to keep a sense of the costs involved, but then there are far more negative ways those sums of money could be spent. Movie making is a positive - it doesn't do any harm.

"Even though I used to visit the sets and see the rushes that had been shot that day, even though I worked on films before and after they were actually shot, when I sat down and saw the finished article I was still every bit as enamoured by the movies and in awe of the work involved as I had ever been.

"One of the great things about the film business is that it can only operate when large numbers of people work together towards a common goal. In my experience there really aren't the prima donnas you might expect and you have to get along with people.

"I met George Lucas at business meetings and functions and he is a quiet man, a very generous man - several times I was quite moved at how generous he was to people - and a businessman.

"Yes, I saw celebrities but they are simply doing a job like the rest of us. It's workaday stuff, believe me."

Liam brings a wealth of expertise to his new job. He studied at Chelsea School of Art and the Slade School at University College London. He worked on the very first computer-animated commercial broadcast in the UK - for the Michelin MX tyre in 1981-82 - and before going to California he taught at Bournemouth University on the BA degree in Computer Visualisation and Animation.

"I saw what the spirit of co-operation can achieve in film-making, but I love the fact I can go down to the studios here and smell oil paint again."

It brings us to a discussion of the role of computer technology in art. Is digital art an art form in itself? Is computer art any less valid than oil painting, for instance? The click of a mouse is no less of an artistic movement than the scratch of pencil on paper or brush on canvas?

"I might not agree with that actually. When you get into computer art you are involved in designing programs - in the early days you had to build a computer as well.

"I was interested in being photo-realistic, but anything you could create on a computer was only a virtual reality. However, it's an exciting time as the edges are being blurred all the time.

"The students are incredibly computer literate, they're like sponges and have no fear of the technology. In that way it is just another tool for them.

"This is the age in which computer technology will really come into its own in all sorts of fields."