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How I spent my summer!

Schools are back this week and I’m sure many young people will be sharing with their classes what they got up to over the summer. I’m sure this will include family holidays, summer schools and spending time with the family. In the same vein I thought I thought I’d share with you what I got up to over my summer this year!

My ‘summer’ started back in June when I spent a week in London working on a TV series called ‘Myth Hunters’. On this programme I was assisting the fantastic DoP Jamie Hobbis on 2 episodes of the new series. The programme saw us working on the drama reconstruction element of the programme – reconstructing ‘great myths’! I love working on these types of programmes, usually working with a small team and creating ‘something from nothing!’.

Jamie Hobbis ‘adjusting the props!’ on Myth Hunters

Next – I started my three week stink with Achievement TV providing live coverage at university graduations and awards ceremonies. This work requires us to provide multi camera, live mixed, coverage of university graduation ceremonies. The coverage goes out on the web via a webcast and is used for overspill theatres and large screens and TVs in the venue. Ultimately the coverage is mass produced into DVD and BluRay discs for graduates and their friends and family to take away “on the day”! The work is very stressful and very challenging for the small team, seeing us multi tasking between camera operating, vision mixing, PSC shooting and editing… With such a quick turn around production it certainly keeps you on your toes!

Mission control for DVD and BluRay mastering

Once finishing my stint with Achievement TV I was straight off to Heathrow Airport to fly over to Singapore to live direct a live webcast. I’ve never visited Singapore before but well, it was fantastic! Extremely hot and humid but extremely clean and very westernised! The event went very well, especially considering I was directing 5 Singaporean camera operators I hadn’t worked with before on an event they hadn’t shot before! With a combination of camera scripts, pre-production meetings, reference videos and rehearsals we managed to pull off a very successful webcast.

Singapore from the Flyer

Mission control in Singapore

My summer ended with a week working on the BBC 4 documentary “Len Goodman’s Big Bands” by RK Productions. Presented by Strictly Come Dancing’s Len Goodman this work saw me assisting cameraman John Anderson as we covered various interviews, chats, pieces to camera and set pieces with musicians and bands.  With a small production team it was a very challenging week with long days, working around and across London, but equally extremely enjoyable too.

Len in conversation with Chris Dean

John shooting a PTC with Len on the Sony F5

So… that’s my summer, here is to the ‘winter season’! Lots of interesting productions in the pipeline which I’m sure I will share on here! Looking forward to getting the new A7s out on a couple of upcoming projects too…