Tuesday 4 October 2011

Transplant

"Transplant" to be broadcast on BBC1 tonight at 10:35pm (UK).

  
I'm really looking forward to seeing this important film later tonight.   I was involved with the planning and early stages of production, but I haven't seen it yet.  I was "on call" as a shooting director for the film, but in the end, I had started another project by the time filming started.  There were quite a few people involved in the making of this film, and in the research period of the production I was lucky enough to witness a transplant operation in full.  The film features incredible, life-saving operations, which are only made possible thanks to the altruism of others.

The Guardian, The Mirror and The Evening Standard all have previews; and it will be available on iplayer after the broadcast.  The BBC news website has an accompanying in-depth article.

And of course, once you have seen this, you might want to consider signing up to be a donor...

Tuesday 12 July 2011

Classroom Secrets - BBC One

Earlier this year, I filmed some of this documentary about a primary school class in Leicester.  The kids were great to film with - it's due to be broadcast on BBC1 at 10:35pm on Thursday 14th July.

Monday 28 February 2011

"Neighbourhood Watched" on BBC1


The new series of social housing documentary "Neighbourhood Watched" will start on Tuesday March 1st (BBC1 at 10:35pm).  I filmed and directed some of the series, Raw Television are the producers.

UPDATE: Watch the most recent episode on iplayer.

Saturday 12 February 2011

True Stories: Britain's Supreme Court (More4)

Karen Hamilton's feature length documentary about the first year of Britain's Supreme Court was recently shown on More4 in the UK.

The Telegraph's Assistant Editor for Home News, Philip Johnston, wrote an interesting review of the film.



My vested interest here is that I shot a small amount of the footage in the film.  I filmed with one of the lawyers featured, and I was there for the official opening, which meant I set eyes on the Queen for the first time in my life.

I'm not really a royalist, and I don't get particularly star-struck, but there is something special about being at an event attended by her majesty - it was a great experience.

Being around the court, and talking to the men and women whose sharp legal minds determine the law, gave me a brief but fascinating insight into the running of the court.  Karen Hamilton's film allows us all that experience, and the level of access afforded to her from the Justices is remarkable.

Tuesday 25 January 2011

No more tapes?

I'm making the leap from tape to memory card... (obviously this is a techy post, so please only read on if your inner geek tells you to).


I'm just setting up the tapeless Canon XF305 (part of XF300 series).  I'm going to be filming a BBC documentary at a school over the next few weeks - it's the first time I've "gone tapeless", so if anyone has any top tips, please get in touch...

As well as switching recoring formats, I'm also (temporarily) abandoning Sony cameras.  I've just been messing around with the Canon to check settings and see what the picture is like.  So far, so good, but I've been told that it's not brilliant in low light.  It looks like I'm going to have to use gain a lot of the time, but I don't want the picture to look grainy.  I guess this can be solved by lighting, but if anyone has experience of shooting on the fly with this camera - particularly in ob-docs, where you don't always have time to control the lighting - please let me know how you got on.

Sunday 16 January 2011

Social housing documentary

For the last six months, I've been working as a Producer/Director on the second series of "Neighbourhood Watched" - a documentary series about social housing for BBC1.  It's a fly-on-the-wall style programme, following housing association officers and their tenants.



These are challenging times for those involved in the provision of social housing - demand is going up and up, but there just aren't enough homes for everyone who wants one.  When I know the broadcast dates I'll put them on the blog.