Compuhire have supported Filmbase as a partner for the last 12 months, so we caught up with the team recently to thank them for their support and to find out a bit more about the people behind the work.

Meet the team

The team at Compuhire have been supplying vintage and modern electronic props, bespoke motion graphics via their sister company Studio C Design, and purpose-built programming and video systems for film and TV productions for over 30 years. We asked them about the work they do, and some of the more unusual parts of the job.

Mark Jordan set up Compuhire in the early 1990s. When he started the company, there was no internet access on set to download graphics, so changes had to be burned onto CD-ROMs in the office and biked to set. Mark is a self-described tech nerd and uses his extensive knowledge to come up with creative solutions for recreating everything from vintage oscilloscope displays to old Sciopticon lantern projectors and split-flap train display boards. He also has one of the largest collections of vintage letterpresses in the UK, and occasionally runs letterpress workshops for Filmbase members.

Sam Jones is Co-director at Compuhire and leads the creative side of screen design. If you’re after future-retro spaceship consoles, flickering holographic interfaces or walls of scrolling code that actually make sense, he’s usually the one behind it. He’s key to the design side, coming up with the kind of graphics that help sell a world. Compuhire have created work like this for Project Hail Mary, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Matrix, The Flash, Silo and many more.

Will Wright is another key member of the team, often found on set inside a spacecraft, Bat cave or hacker den, setting up complicated, custom-built playback systems across up to hundreds of screens. We’ve seen Will at work, and it’s a bit like watching a wizard when he taps in a few lines of code and suddenly a wall of modern iPads becomes a bank of ageing CRT monitors.

Simon Petley-Jones runs the Prop-Hire department and manages an extensive collection of electronic and period props, including retrofitted 1980s IBM computers and vintage TV sets. The collection is now housed on the top floor of Classic’s new warehouse across from Sky Elstree. Simon says to come and say hi!