Dan Haigh

Dan Haigh (born 5 December 1982) is an English musician, film director, video game designer, writer and visual effects artist. He is best known as co-founder of synthwave band GUNSHIP and as the bass player in the English alternative rock band Fightstar.

Early life

Dan Haigh was born in Grimsby^[1] and later attended Rugby School.

Music

GUNSHIP

Haigh co-founded GUNSHIP with Alex Westaway in 2014.^[2]

Fightstar

Dan Haigh is a founding member of the band Fightstar. Please see the Fightstar page for complete details.

Film Music

Dan Haigh has composed music for numerous film projects.^{[3][4][5][6][7][8]}

The 3rd Letter - In a distinctive dystopian future, humans utterly depend on health-care and technology to withstand the deteriorating climate.^[3]

Auroras - Constantly orbiting at 400 km (250 mi) above the earth, the ISS is perfectly situated to witness the beautiful streamers of green and red light emanating from the collision of highly charged solar wind particles with oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the earth's atmosphere. Centered about the northern (Aurora Borealis) and southern (Aurora Australis) poles the Auroras move in an almost hypnotic dance below the space station^[5]

Supervised - Two men trapped in a laboratory, desperately fight to delay an explosive chip from going off in their skulls. Clinging to the knowledge that someone must be sending help.^[6]

Milk in First^[7]

Mt. Paran^[8]

Game Music

Dan Haigh composed the theme music for the popular WW2 game 'Day Of Defeat'^[9][10][11]

Video Game Designer

When Haigh first saw id software's DooM he knew he had to become involved with game development.^[12][13] Dan grew up playing games on an Amiga 500 and credits some of his favorite early games as Syndicate (Amiga), Doom 2 (PC), Quake (PC), Beneath a Steel Sky (CD32), Blade Runner (PC), Alien Breed (Amiga), and the Monkey Island series.^[14]

Haigh was part of the early mod scene and worked on numerous mods including Rocket Arena 3,^[15] "Target Quake",^[16] and later went onto form Lethargy Software with Alex Gingell^[13] whom were responsible for the Quake 1 mission pack "Deaths Dominion"^[17] and most notably the "Oblivion" mission pack for Quake 2^[18] which PC Gamer released as a cover disk^[19] Haigh and Gingell conceived the game and together managed a team of 10 amateur modders and tackled the bulk of the design work in order to bring the game to life.

Electronic Arts hired Haigh after seeing "Oblivion" and he went to work on his first official title - Quake 3 Revolution.^[20]

Haigh later worked for Gearbox Software,^[21] pocketeers^[20] and Valve software^[22]

Director

Dan Haigh co-founded the production company Horsie In The Hedge with Alex Gingell in 2005^[23]

In the games industry Dan designed levels for games such as Quake and Counter Strike under the pseudonym Inflict. Dan worked for Electronic Arts, Bullfrog, Gearbox Software, Valve Software and Pocketeers. Aside from design, Dan also created music for video games, most notably for Valve software's "Day Of Defeat". [1] In the film industry Dan co-founded the London-based production company 'Horsie In The Hedge'. He has written and directed numerous music videos including Tesseract’s controversial video “Singularity” and Fightstar’s videos for "Palahniuk's Laughter" and "Paint Your Target". Dan also co-wrote and directed the film “In God We Trust”. [2] Dan also made graphics for the Fightstar EP "They Liked You Better When You Were Dead". Dan used to skateboard for Purple Team Skateboards. Dan is currently working on a new musical project called GUNSHIP with Alex Westaway. According to Dan "GUNSHIP is a neon soaked, late night, sonic getaway drive, dripping with luscious analog synthesizers, cinematic vocals and cyberpunk values, exploding from the front cover of a dusty plastic VHS case which has lain forgotten since 1984."

References