Paul Wiffen

The first feature film Paul worked on was Ridley Scott's Blade Runner as he was employed by Vangelis on leaving Oxford University with a Master's Degree in Languages as a sound designer during the composition and recording of the soundtrack for this seminal film. Paul then worked as a musician, sound designer and music programmer for 20 years, doing more sound design work for Vangelis on The Bounty starring Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson, Francesco starring Mickey Rourke and another Ridley Scott masterpiece 1492: Conquest of Paradise as well as for Paul McCartney on the title song for John Landis' Spies Like Us. On a two year stint with Stevie Wonder, he programmed sounds and sequences for songs in Die Hard, Woman in Red and Jungle Fever and whilst in Los Angeles also worked with award-winning composers Mark Isham and Hans Zimmer. Most recently, his sounds were used by Peter Gabriel in Philip Noyce's Rabbitproof Fence. Outside of films he programmed for Ultravox (including Midge Ure's bass-line on the best-selling Band Aid single Do They Know It's Christmas), Geoff Downes (Buggles, Yes, Asia), Peter Gabriel and Jean-Michel Jarre (including the 1989 concert in Paris to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution which is still listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's biggest ever concert with an audience of 2 million. He also assisted Elliot Scheiner on 5.1 surround remixes of Bohemian Rhapsody, Long Train Running and Brand New Day for film sound specialists DTS. In 2001, Paul went to work for Apple Computer to demonstrate their Logic and Final Cut Pro software packages at Cannes, AppleExpo and Video Forum which marked the start of his own career as an editor and then director of music videos, shorts, virals, commercials and eventually feature films. His first 30min film Personal Justice (written by historian/playwright Ivo Moseley and starring Swedish actress Frida Farrell) was nominated for his cinematography in the Turner Classic Shorts section of the 2005 London Film Festival. At the Cannes Film Festival, he won the Audience Award at the 24hr Film Challenge for Love On The High Side, a 5 min short shot and edited in 7 hours (he spent the first 17 hours finding a camera to shoot on). In 2008, he was hired to do sound on a Jonathan King documentary which director Garth Jennings was then forced to abandon because of his own film Son of Rambow so Paul ended up directing all the new High Definition footage for Vile Pervert: The Musical and editing the entire film as well, which Time Out made Film Of The Week shortly after its Coronet premiere in Notting Hill. It has so far had almost 60,000 views on the Internet at vilepervert.com In 2010, Paul directed another film for Jonathan, this time a fictional musical set in North London loosely based on Romeo and Juliet, in which a tabloid newspaper work experience girl falls in love with the graffiti artist whose identity she is assigned to uncover. Featuring an attractive and talented teenage cast drawn from the best stage and drama colleges in London, Me Me Me will premiere in May 2011 at the Cannes Film Festival, Kensington Odeon, London and the Eurovision Song Contest in Dusseldorf. Also in 2010, Paul associate produced and appeared in a short film Private View which received an honorable mention in the L.A. Movie Awards in December and will premiere in Cannes 2011. Future projects see him directing his own first feature film script Carmilla (adapted by from J Sheridan Le Fanu's 1871 novella of the same name, one of the inspirations for Bram Stoker's Dracula) as well as developing a feature film based on the Emmy and BAFTA award-winning TV series The New Statesman starring Rik Mayall as Alan B'Stard with writers Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, in which B'Stard leaves the corrupt world of politics to move onto world domination (Bond villain-style) via a multi-national corporation which is bigger than Apple, Microsoft and Google combined.