How’s the creative scene where you live? Oh, it’s amazing, especially the people that we surround ourselves with that draw – it’s just a constant sounding board for everyone. And London – well, I have worked in a few other cities in the world and at the moment I wouldn’t really want to be anywhere else, to be honest with you. It’s perfect timing.

Christian’s pitch View QuickTime

Seizing the day Imagine is something that I have been working on for a long time, and, funny enough, I had always wanted to use the Getty Images footage that I ended up using. I kind of had an idea of what I wanted to do, but obviously you can’t go out and hire a helicopter and fly around the Grand Canyon when you are still trying to make some money, so when the competition came along it was a perfect opportunity.

Modern geography So I had my wish list. I had my Grand Canyon shots – I knew I wanted to use those. I had two shots immediately, and it was just a case of staging the 3D helicopter and come sweeping in with the music and go flying out. You’d be hard pressed to find a better shot than that. And then I had just a bit more time to go through the whole collection and really go down to the depths of what I wanted to use, and in that sense it was an amazing process. Once I had my shot, then I would build the 3D models or the 3D structures or whatever it was, and then I’d bring those in, which is a process I had been doing for a long time. All the textures of the rocks and stuff in the Grand Canyon are all taken from still frames from the backdrops that I used, and I just threw them on as textures, which makes the coloring and the texture seamlessly blend into the actual backdrop.

See the Grand Canyon effects sequence View QuickTime

Eleventh hour I was really happy to get into the second stage of the competition, and then I think we had a couple of months to get into the final stage. That was a bit tougher because you could see the competition – you knew that there was some good stuff out there. I guess everyone just stuck with their idea and just carried it through and made a mad dash at the last minute. On the last day my computer died, so I nearly didn’t have a project, which is sad. I’d only just got the music rights from Sigur Rós, so that was also intense. I had been promised it, but it was just getting the actual physical piece of paper. It’s just all those little things – it’s the same with any job I have done, it’s all always down to the wire, always down to the last second until the client is grabbing it from your hand.

View still frames 1, 2, 3

Starring role Getting the assets was probably the easiest thing I have ever come across in terms of stock footage. It’s just a case of downloading – just pick what you want and download the clip. Just as simple as that, and you instantly have anywhere in the world that you want to play with. It’s an unlimited resource in terms of finding what I wanted. The potential for the Getty Images role in the filmmaking process is unlimited, as I think I’ve shown. I feel I’ve succeeded in bringing Getty Images footage in to the realm of high-end 3D and compositing. It shows how much further you can take the footage on offer. Three films that have inspired your work? Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. These films inspired me early in my life and paved the way in terms of what I wanted to do.

Another effects sequence View QuickTime

Fertile ground You know, there’s nothing special about the equipment I was using, so it shows that you can achieve quite a lot with the tools that we can buy in stores. There is no myth behind how attainable high-end 3D is. It’s just if you are prepared to learn the work – that’s the biggest thing. I think it’s important for Getty to be seen as a conceptual library, because you can instantly storyboard a Grand Canyon scene and throw everything together and say this is what it is. Maybe you would actually go out and shoot everything for real and get the exact composition that you wanted, but in the initial stages – and at lower budgets – you don’t have to hire a helicopter and pay thousands of pounds to go to the Grand Canyon. If you have a vision then you can achieve it, through the use of Getty and through the use of your own time, hard work and dedication – it’s all attainable.

Christian with fellow finalist Morgan Christie at The Next Big Idea premiere in Los Angeles. 71193549, Getty Images If The Next Big Idea were a plate of food? A huge platter of sushi.