91Èȱ¬

Mark at the premier of Madagascar

Bearwood-born Mark Swift is living the American Dream, producing some of the biggest animated blockbusters of recent years.

Mark works for Steven Spielberg's California-based Dreamworks film company and his latest project – Madagascar – Escape 2 Africa went straight in at number one on the UK cinema charts in December 2008.

Living in sunny San Francisco and married to an American girl and with three young children, Mark still remembers growing up in Birmingham, day-dreaming of one day working in Hollywood.

"When I was at school I always wanted to work in movies," he says. "I thought they were cool. But you grow up in Birmingham and the only thing that you see that's from Birmingham is like Crossroads.

"There's nothing wrong with that! (laughs). I was very excited when I'd see a Cross Roads person on the bus growing up. But that was the closest thing to tv or film around. You think it's one of those impossible things that's never going to happen."

Twist of fate

After attending both Cardinal Newman School in Edgbaston and St. Philip's College near the Oratory, Mark headed to Manchester University to study economics. A twist of fate saw his life change direction quite dramatically:

Steven Spielberg - GETTY IMAGES

"Someone I knew through a friend said: 'Hey, there's a job going as a runner on a movie down in London.' It happened to be an animated movie that Steven Spielberg was making there with all the Roger Rabbit people as Roger Rabbit was made in London. There's a big tradition of animation in England.

"So I went down to London after college and stuck around there for a number of years and every year or two I'd kind of get a promotion. Then in 1995 I moved to the States to work on Prince of Egypt with Dreamworks as Spielberg was forming Dreamworks. He took about 150 of us over to work on that so I've kind of stuck around."

Mark now has a string of animated hits under his belt including the original Shark Tale (associate producer), Bee Movie (co-producer), The Prince of Egypt (animation production supervisor) and The Road to Eldorado (production manager).

Producing

Madagascar – Escape 2 Africa gives Mark full producer credit but what exactly does 'producing' entail?

"We work with the writers, we work with the studio, we work with all the actors," he explains. "But once you get into the making of the movie it's about everything being on budget and on schedule and that everyone is pulling the same way.

"When you've got 4-500 people all working on one project you have to keep people in line, especially in an animated movie. You can imagine – all these different 'creative types'. Everyone has their own opinion on what the movie should be and how it should work. Animators to a certain degree are like actors.

Will Smith at the B'ham Hitch premiere

"We have 30 or 40 different 'actors' in the animation department all animating Alex the Lion. Well they all have a slightly different take on how Alex should be and you have to make sure that they're all making the same Alex the Lion. Sometimes the animators can behave like actors and get all huffy.

"Some of these guys can be working on a scene for two or three weeks and they show it to us and we say: 'Well no – that's not what we asked for.' So they storm out the room and you have to pull them back and get them back motivated again."

Hollywood stars

Some of Mark's 'colleagues' on past projects include Will Smith, Chris Rock, Robert DeNiro, Ben Stiller and Sacha Baron Cohen, Hollywood superstars who have provided the voices for many of the crazy cartoon characters.

Rock and Stiller both star in Madagascar – Escape 2 Africa and watching them at work is clearly one of the joys of Mark's job.

"It's funny because you take the script for them to record and because they’re all writers, and directors and producers in their own right and some of the funniest people in the business, they take our scripts and basically redo it," he says.

A budding film maker in action

"They come up with funnier lines and funnier versions of what we're trying to do and we're having a great time sitting back and watching these amazing professionals go at it.

“There was one time when Ben Stiller and Chris Rock who are probably two of the funniest people in the world recorded (their parts) and it was like going to a comedy show."

The question remains though – Birmingham to Hollywood. What's the secret?

"It's always about knowing someone. If anyone ever wants to do things like this it's handy to go to college. Not so much to get a degree but just to meet people and join things.

"Because someone will get a job somewhere and you'll know them and you'll have an in. If you would have told me when I was at school that I'd be a movie producer I'd have been well chuffed! I can't complain!"