HOT SHOTS 2014
HOT SHOTS 2014
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All photography by Peter Searle commissioned exclusively by Broadcast. Assisted by Ben Hay. For more information about the photographer, visit: www.petersearle.com
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Introduction
Breadth, talent and versatility “When breadth is aligned with talent, great things happen.” Every so often when reading Hot Shots entries, a phrase will leap out from the generally warm but familiar plaudits, summing up the spirit of the whole enterprise. If you want proof of the multi-skilling you need to survive in TV today, consider this: one of our Hot Shot’s submissions detailed 10 very different skillsets. Read the entries on this year’s crop and you’ll see that many are credited with being allrounders, often working on their own or in small teams. We’ve also got part-time stand-up comedians, an editor whose work is informed by his strengths as a musician, and a networker supreme who has ploughed all her time and energy into helping young talent make connections. We’re featuring a record 66 talented under-30s this year, many nominated by Hot Shots of yesteryear, from Zai Bennett and Karl Warner to more recent successes such as Keo Films’ Colleen Flynn and Telegraph Hill’s Barry Pilling. What’s clear is that, particularly in factual, young voices are breaking though big-time. Under-30s are steering big hits and noisy shows from The Man With The Ten Stone Testicles and Royal Marines Commando School, to Meet The Police Commissioner, Inside No.9, Bad Education and The Wright Stuff. They’re writing everything from CBeebies show Justin’s House to Russell T Davies’ upcoming E4 drama Banana – and there are some bold new voices in comedy. Key talent from Gemma Kearney to Morgana Robinson and Karl Pilkington are making waves thanks to a new breed of young agent, while experienced old hands such as Sir David Attenborough, Charles Sturridge and the producers of The South Bank Show are asking for these people by name. We had a lot of fun with the awards-table theme of this year’s shoot at The Brewery in London and our subjects were very game (kudos to the group reaching for the Prosecco at 9.55am). Please join me in raising a glass to them all. ➤ Robin Parker, Hot Shots editor
Contents 4 Production Our 21 production Hot Shots are pitching ideas, winning commissions and working on some of the most popular shows across the genres 10 Directors These nine talented directors are quickly building their reputations in genres from documentary to fact ent and drama 16 Writers Industry luminaries including Ash Atalla and Russell T Davies sing the praises of these 10 young writers 22 Craft & Post From sound to vision-mixing, editing and even running a post house, our 12 craft Hot Shots are on their way to the top
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26 Business Agents, sales whizzes and a young entrepreneur are among this year’s crop of eight business talents 30 Digital Our six digital Hot Shots include YouTube channel managers, marketers, producers and dealmakers
With thanks to The Brewery, London for providing the venue for our photoshoot. www.thebrewery.co.uk
Broadcast Editor Chris Curtis Supplement Editor Robin Parker Group Art Director Peter Gingell Production Editor Dominic Needham Group Commercial Director Alison Pitchford Sales Manager Sonya Jacobs Business Development Director Patricia Arescy Production Manager Jon Cooke
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HOT SHOTS 2014
Left to right: Charlet Duboc, Tom Green, Kayleigh Smith, Hamish Fergusson, Chloe Seddon
Production CHARLET DUBOC, 29 DOCUMENTARY-MAKER/PRESENTER, VICE As an intern at Vice three years ago, Charlet pitched an idea that has gone on to become one of the channel’s most successful ongoing series. Now into its second season, Fashion Week Internationale uses the prism of fashion to explore global social issues, from transgender and race in Rio to homosexuality in Lagos. As presenter, Charlet’s become a recognisable and relatable face to Vice’s viewers, clocking up more than 6.5 million YouTube views, and has also fronted docs Teenage Exorcists and Black Bike Week. But it’s her ability to give voices to under-represented communities and find the story behind difficult issues that has helped her grow as a producer. “Charlet knows what works and researches and develops all her own stories,” notes Vice
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head of video Al Brown. “She is able to take a film from conception all the way through the edit, remaining objective and putting her audience first at all times.” TOM GREEN, 28 PRODUCER, BRITESPARK FILMS Tom was Nick Godwin’s first hire when the former Cineflix head of documentaries launched BriteSpark last year. “He’s one of a new generation of film-makers for whom the old boundaries are irrelevant,” says Godwin. “He’s smart and adaptable and embraces the new, constantly evolving technology with ease. And he can write, direct, shoot and edit.” Earlier in his career, Tom was nominated for a Welsh Bafta for his drama short The Ref and developed Channel 4 docs World’s Tallest Man and Alien Mummies for indie Wild Dream.
At BriteSpark, Tom has been writing treatments, shooting and editing taster tapes and pitching to commissioners. He’s already made a one-hour doc about Hatton Garden for ITV, Diamond Geezers And Gold Dealers, which aired at the end of July. Godwin highlights Tom’s uncynical approach, tenacity and charm: “He forges absolutely genuine relationships with contributors and instinctively understands what works on the screen - and how to get it.” KAYLEIGH SMITH, 28 ASSISTANT PRODUCER, NINE LIVES MEDIA Kayleigh has secured three major commissions worth £300,000 since winning a training placement with Manchester-based Nine Lives four years ago. Her first was no easy win: she persuaded a young transgender couple to
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Production
Joining Twofour straight from university, he has helped to develop the likes of BBC1’s Holiday Hit Squad and BBC2’s The Story of Musicals. He cut his teeth as a P/D making My Kidney And Me, a First Cut doc for Channel 4, and on Sky Atlantic’s British Cycling: Road To Glory. “Hamish is one of the brightest minds I’ve come across in telly,” says Twofour creative director Andrew Mackenzie. “He can turn his hand to anything from sensitive access to entertainment formats. I’d wager he’ll be running the industry one day.” CHLOE SEDDON, 28 PRODUCER, OUTLINE PRODUCTIONS Chloe’s output to date strikes the ideal balance between depth, authority and entertainment, according to Outline Productions’ creative director Helen Veale. “Her instinctive ability to cut through complex specialist factual content and make it into more engaging and accessible TV is incredibly rare, and she combines this with a brilliant sense of visual storytelling,” Veale says. As well as stints at Studio Lambert and Oxford Scientific Films, Chloe previously worked on BBC in-house specialist factual event Volcano Live and fact ent series Dara O Briain’s Science Club. At Outline, she has played a key role in delivering Channel 4 series Health Freaks and BBC1 pilot So You Think You Can Drive. Veale marvels at her drive to deliver memorable and stylish sequences, whether that’s personally designing and building props in the small hours for a road-safety stunt, or painstakingly negotiating with experts to conduct clinical trials. “Chloe takes the definition of ‘can do’ to a whole new level,” she says.
feature in BBC3’s one-off doc Sam And Evan – From Girls To Men. From there, she secured one of the UK’s leading endocrinologists for Channel 5’s Extraordinary People film Shrinking My 17 Stone Legs, and found and cast the family for CBBC My Life doc One Way Ticket. Each was developed from her original idea and involved self-shooting, location access and contributor interviews. “Kayleigh comes up with more programme ideas than any of other member of the production team,” remarks Nine Lives chief executive Cat Lewis. Sensitive human-interest stories have become her forte – she’s also worked on BBC3’s Small Teen Turns Eighteen and C5’s The Girl With 90% Burns. Meanwhile, she was assistant producer on BBC1’s Pound Shop Wars and The Trouble With Mobility Scooters.
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“Kayleigh is a true all-rounder,” says Nine Lives joint creative director Kerry Brierley. “She has a keen editorial eye, visual flair, amazing organisational skills and an inbuilt desire to be creatively innovative.” HAMISH FERGUSSON, 28 PRODUCER, TWOFOUR Educating Essex, Educating Yorkshire and now Royal Marines Commando School are three enormously successful fixed-rig shows, and all bear Hamish’s imprint. He gained access to Passmores Academy for Twofour’s first Educating… series, on which he served as assistant producer, before working as one of two P/Ds on the Yorkshire series. But Commando School is his labour of love, having spent three months embedded at a Devon training centre getting to know the recruits.
ROOPESH PAREKH, 29 FREELANCE LINE PRODUCER/ CO-PRODUCER/ PRODUCTION MANAGER Red Dwarf, Inside No. 9 and Da Vinci’s Demons: not a bad trio of shows to have on your CV before you reach 30. Joining UKTV’s revival of the sci-fi sitcom as a marketing producer, Roopesh delivered a twohour behind-the-scenes doc and line produced all of its RTS Award-winning VFX. “He is a master politician,” says Red Dwarf writer/director Rob Grant. “He is both popular and tough at the right times, and he’s an utter delight to work with.” Roopesh recently co-produced Jon Ronson’s short film The Dog Thrower for Sky Arts. Describing him as “a bloody wonder”, producer Stevie Lee says: “I’ve never worked with anyone who better rolls with the punches or gives more to a production.” He recalls Roopesh trawling eBay for cheap props, wearing a bluescreen suit to get a shot right, and even gluing fur to a plastic glove to suggest a flying dog. Next up: Top Coppers, a Roughcut TV comedy for BBC3, and the second Hollow Crown for BBC2.
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HOT SHOTS 2014
GABY AUNG, 29 JUNIOR PRODUCER, ELECTRIC RAY “In an industry full of self-promoters and cynical networkers, it’s too easy to overlook an artisan,” says Mentorn creative director Mark Roberts. “Thoughtful but dynamic, charismatic yet selfeffacing, industrious but endlessly creative, Gaby is the one everyone wants on their team.” Not least Karl Warner, who snapped her up for his new indie Electric Ray. “She has a great eye for character, an instinct for sharp, original ideas, and she shoots and edits too. Gaby is a one-woman development team.” Previously at Mentorn, where she was an AP, she worked on Channel 4’s Chicken Shop, Sky 1’s Greggs: More Than Meets The Pie and BBC3’s Hotel Of Mum And Dad. She’s since secured access to United Utilities for BBC2 ob-doc series Watermen and booked US locations and shot second camera for MTV’s Young And Married. Roberts predicts big things: “When breadth is aligned with talent, great things happen.”
Left to right: Gaby Aung, Josh Cole, Morgana Pugh, Sarah Collinson, Charlotte Bingham, Cimran Shah, Peter Fison
JOSH COLE, 27 CO-PRODUCER, BIG TALK PRODUCTIONS Big Talk’s youngest development producer is set to break through just two years after joining the comedy indie. Having helped fellow Hot Shot, writer Freddy Syborn (page 18), develop ITV2 sitcom Cockroaches, he is co-producing the series. He also developed and produced In Deep, a BBC3 Comedy Feed pilot, and was a development producer on BBC3’s Him And Her. His previous credits include Dragon’s Den, Dick & Dom’s Funny Business, It’s A Mad, Mad World and Watson & Oliver. “Josh has a keen eye for a good idea,” says Big Talk chief executive Kenton Allen. “He is rapidly developing his abilities in the always tricky balancing act of giving difficult notes to talented writers and trying to coax comedy out of a knackered cast and crew at 4am.” MORGANA PUGH, 29 SENIOR PRODUCER, TWENTY TWENTY “Morgana is the most organised, passionate and committed producer I’ve ever employed,” declares Twenty Twenty Television head of factual entertainment Sam Whittaker. She’s become a first port of call in any new project for the indie, notching up credits on BBC1’s Life Savers and BBC2 series Reverse Missionary and The Choir: Sing While You Work (where she negotiated access to four companies, including the Royal Mail). Recently, Morgana gained her first senior producer credit on series two of Channel 4’s fixed-rig format First Dates. “Sincerity, accuracy and diligence shine through all that she does,” says Whittaker. “Her judgement is finely tuned and she’s not afraid of tough conversations. Her ability to explain properly the complexities of production while maintaining access is superb.” Morgana’s now working on BBC1 art talent show The Big Picture. Executive producer Colm Martin is unequivocal: “She’s one of the best people working in TV right now.”
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SARAH COLLINSON, 28 PRODUCER, BLAKEWAY PRODUCTIONS In four years at Blakeway, Sarah has clocked up eight Dispatches, including some of the C4 strand’s more high-profile investigations. Her proposal, undercover filming and creation of a ‘pop-up job centre’ underpinned Tricks Of The Dole Cheats, while she took Ryanair: Secrets From The Cockpit from development to commission, sourcing four pilots to be interviewed anonymously and directing its foreign shoots. She’s since worked as an AP on Adoption, a 60-minute investigation for ITV’s Exposure strand, securing interviews with top judges, barristers and politicians, and dealing with complex legal and compliance issues. “Sarah impresses everyone she meets,” says Blakeway series producer Julie Shaw. “With a
journalistic instinct second to none, she has proved herself capable of rivalling seasoned producers. Her potential is limitless.” CHARLOTTE BINGHAM, 29 PRODUCER, SKY NEWS Charlotte has shrugged off the pressures of the newsroom in the past nine months, producing fast-turnaround docs on Britain’s floods, building on the live storm coverage that she oversaw. She has also launched and edited two new magazine shows –Week In Review and Entertainment Week – for Sky’s on-demand platform. Amid all of this, she’s continued to produce Sky News breakfast show Sunrise. “She excels equally on the ground, in the edit suite or the gallery,” says executive editor John McAndrew. “Charlotte is capable of doing whatever she wants,” adds executive producer Ronan Hughes.
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Production
Production
“Her versatility is second to none, her energy’s endless and her creativity knows no limit. She has the potential to become an executive producer or a documentary-maker – she’s got so many ideas that she will be able to create her own future.” CIMRAN SHAH, 27 FREELANCE ASSISTANT PRODUCER Since starting as a researcher on BBC1’s live weekly current affairs programme This Week, Cimran has spread his wings across factual, drama and entertainment. His first AP credit was on London’s Burning, a Channel 4 drama about the 2011 London riots. Knocking on doors posing as an estate agent, he uncovered five of the six stories that were dramatised in the finished programme. Since then, he’s worked on RDF TV’s Secrets Of The Shoplifters and Secrets Of The Pickpockets,
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and Raw TV’s Paranormal Witness. He was David Mitchell’s AP on C4’s 10 O’Clock Live, pitching ideas, booking guests and doing runthroughs, which put him in good stead for a similar role on BBC1’s The Michael McIntyre Chat Show. Son of Juniper TV boss Samir Shah, Cimran has nevertheless forged his own path, “gobbling up experience all over town”, says Hardy Pictures creative director Justin Hardy, who witnessed Cimran’s “energy, chutzpah, intelligence and, where necessary, humility” on Hardy’s feature film Love Me Till Monday. PETER FISON, 29 PRODUCER/DIRECTOR, WINDFALL FILMS Watching bats, orangutans and dolphins mate is not everyone’s idea of fun, but Peter has won
plaudits, not least from Sir David Attenborough, for his commitment to delivering bold and surprising natural history footage. He was the creative force behind BBC2’s recent Natural World doc The Batman Of Mexico, wading though guano-strewn land on a night-shoot in bandit country to film the elusive tequila bats mating and giving birth in caves. Peter also produced two films for Channel 4’s Sex In The Wild, having previously worked as AP on a jungle special of Inside Nature’s Giants. He produced BBC2’s The Wonder Of Dogs and tackled the live and multiplatform production of C4 event pieces Easter Eggs Live and Foxes Live: Wild In The City. “Peter is a force of nature,” says Windfall chief executive David Dugan. “He goes where other producers fear to tread and always brings back sensational material.”
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HOT SHOTS 2014
Left to right: Johnny McDevitt, Helen Docherty, Natalie Wright, Ross Goodlass, Leonie Wheeler, Georgia Orwell, Max Welch
JOHNNY MCDEVITT, 29 ASSISTANT PRODUCER, DISPATCHES Johnny’s press background has put him in good stead since he gained a place on the inaugural Channel 4 Investigative Journalism training scheme. His Channel 4 News investigation into doctors who continue to work despite being restricted, suspended or struck off was nominated for Investigation of the Year at the 2012 British Journalism Awards. Since then, two recent Dispatches have stood out: Hate On The Terrorists and The Police’s Dirty Secret, for which he won praise for tracing elusive and occasionally volatile contributors and dealing with them sensitively, often undercover. “He’ll go to amazing lengths to secure access and pictures,” says Firecrest executive producer Nicole Kleeman. “It’s a demanding and tricky skillset, but Johnny has the potential to go right to the top.”
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HELEN DOCHERTY, 28 HEAD OF DEVELOPMENT, VOLTAGE TV “The best development producer I’ve worked with – ever,” declares Voltage TV chief executive Sanjay Singhal. Noting that Helen has secured more than 20 funded developments, Singhal praises her “prodigious energy, inventiveness and versatility”. He adds: “She just gets it. If she thinks an idea doesn’t work, we drop it, because she’s always right.” Helen previously worked in-house at BBC Science, leading the development of BBC2 series Cloud Lab and working on Jimmy’s Food Factory and Operation Iceberg. She was also AP on Nutopia’s Emmy-winning US series Mankind: The Story Of All Of Us. Singhal says Helen has a maturity that belies her years: “You’d think she was born running a team. She could be a senior commissioner or head of factual at a big indie within a decade.”
NATALIE WRIGHT, 27 ASSISTANT PRODUCER, TONIGHT, ITN As first researcher then assistant producer on ITV’s Tonight, Natalie tackled everything from America’s relationship with guns to the recall of dangerous white goods and the Moore tornado. Covering paternity leave for ITN’s Washington bureau chief proved just the break she needed to step up a gear, solo producing two films for ITV’s new current affairs strand on assignment. This was on top of a crowded news agenda that took in the Oscars, the legacy of slavery in Louisiana and gun crime in Chicago. “Nat’s main strength is her confidence,” remarks executive producer Natalie Fay. “She’s a clever journalist with a knack for finding interesting case studies – she could talk anybody into anything. She’s also a lightningfast producer, someone you can run ideas past but comfortable enough to suggest her own.”
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Production
Production
GEORGIA ORWELL, 25 FREELANCE PRODUCTION CO-ORDINATOR From work experience on the BBC Proms to production co-ordinator on the live broadcast of ITV’s National Television Awards, Georgia has moved fast since graduating from the National Film & Television School. Live events producer Alison Brodie gave Georgia a break on the Proms and then employed her as runner on the National Lottery Awards before inviting her to step up to production coordinator on the 2013 Proms. She then took her with her to the NTAs, made by Indigo, and they’re now working together on Storyvault Films’ Sky Arts Portrait Artist Of The Year. Brodie predicts a production manager role for Georgia within five years, with a future in events or film production: “As well as being a delight to work with, she’s always one step ahead of what is required.” MAX WELCH, 23 CO-FOUNDER, RENOWNED FILMS The arrival of London Live has enabled some nimble young production teams to make their mark. Max was first with the pitch for F2 Kicks Off. He went on to direct and produce all 16 episodes, and has since negotiated international distribution with Electric Sky. It’s the young producer’s second credit after directing and producing Sky sports lifestyle format Winners Circle, and London Live director of programming and commissioning Jonathan Boseley is staggered by his adaptability. “He has the unique ability to craft, produce, write, direct, self-shoot and edit at the highest level as a one-man band,” he says. “Max is one of the leading examples of a new generation that is laying the foundations for a shift in how content will be made in the years to come.” JAMES FARRELL, 28 PRODUCER, BBC COMEDY
ROSS GOODLASS, 28 DEVELOPMENT PRODUCER, FIRECRACKER FILMS The story of Wesley Warren Jr, aka The Man With The Ten Stone Testicles, would always be an attention-grabber. But after two years with his subject, Ross delivered a film beyond all expectations, clocking up 4.7 million viewers for Channel 4. “Many people work in development for years without being able to claim ownership of any successful, commissioned ideas,” says Firecracker head of programmes Jes Wilkins. “This is unequivocally not the case with Ross, who has personally originated some of the highestrating, arresting and most talked- and tweetedabout factual TV of the past few years.” Ross is also behind BBC3’s Unsafe Sex In The City, which has run for two years, plus C4 docs The Man Who Buys Anything, The Nightclub Toilet, Don’t Look Down and The Repo Men.
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LEONIE WHEELER, 26 PRODUCER, THE WRIGHT STUFF Going from runner to producer of Channel 5’s flagship daily live show The Wright Stuff three years after joining a graduate trainee scheme is no small feat. Famously hard-to-please Matthew Wright has described Leonie as one of the best producers ever to work on the show. “Leonie’s a creative dynamo,” says executive producer Tim Cunningham. “After 14 years on air, The Wright Stuff needs constant feeding to stay relevant and entertaining. The entire team know there’s no need to worry when she’s in charge.” Cunningham praises her “quick, accurate and always thought-provoking” writing, full of “great turns of phrase”, and says her swift ascent is due to her balance of boldness and ambition and the support she gives to junior members of the team. He concludes: “Creative, thoughtful and a great leader, there is no task she’s not up to tackling.”
“Blow-out-of-thewater-good” is how BBC3 controller Zai Bennett describes upcoming six-part sitcom 600 Days. Credit goes to James Farrell, who single-handedly developed and won his first BBC3 series commission instantly, following a read-through in the room. It certainly helps that he cut his teeth on BBC1’s breakout hit Mrs Brown’s Boys. Starting out as assistant producer on series one and two, he rose to producer on series three and produced the 2013 Christmas specials, watched by a phenomenal 15 million viewers. “James is one of those producers who can do it all,” says BBC comedy executive producer Stephen McCrum. BBC controller, fiction and entertainment, Mark Freeland adds: “James has that look in his eye of a producer who is hungry to do bigger and better work – even when he has already produced the biggest comedy on British TV.”
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HOT SHOTS 2014
Marvyn Benoit, 28 Producer/director: Doggy Styling; Who are You? Marvyn has built up an eclectic factual CV over the past few years, as a researcher on shows from Twofour’s Noel’s HQ and The Hotel Inspector to Princess Productions’ Eddie Stobart: Trucks & Trailers. He’s stepped up to AP on series such as The Undateables and The Audience, but a turning point came with his arrival at Swan Films to produce Grayson Perry’s second Channel 4 series, Who Are You?. Managing director Joe Evans was impressed with Marvyn’s “charm, warmth and intelligence” – and also with the sharp eye and directorial flair he brought to an earlier short doc, Dinner Time. With Swan, Marvyn delivered his debut C4 First Cut film Doggy Styling, which opened up the strange world of extreme dog grooming. “It’s a masterclass in comic documentary,” says Evans. “It’s full of his wit and storytelling ability, and proved that he can encourage the best performances from contributors.”
Directors
Daniel Dewsbury, 29 Director: How To Get A Council House; Modern Times Dan caught the eye of Studio Lambert as a researcher on Secret Millionaire. Impressed with reports that he convinced a key contributor to stay on the shoot, executive producer Ros Ponder tried to keep hold of him – only to find out he was off to work for BBC2’s Wonderland strand. Pursuing him for three years, Ponder finally secured him as location director on Channel 4 series How To Get A Council House, where she again observed his sensitivity in dealing with vulnerable contributors. “Whether with millionaire businessmen or in the homeless unit of a council, he’ll gain the trust and respect of whomever he meets,” she says. Dan’s now working on BBC2’s revived Modern Times with executive producer Fergus O’Brien. “He’s always had a great instinct and now he’s harnessed all his key skills and experiences to make the most of his talent,” O’Brien says. “He has both a natural curiosity and an understanding of how to tell a story with warmth, insight, wit and intelligence.” Jack Warrender, 28 director: 12 days; Channel 4 News After years shooting and editing his own films at home – while his day job took him on set as part of the camera team on feature films from The Young Victoria to Gravity – Jack set his sights on directing documentaries full-time two years ago. After completing his MA at the National Film and Television School, he took his graduation film Side By Side to the Scottish Documentary Institute and Creative Scotland’s This Is Scotland, a scheme for up-and-coming doc-makers. His submission Lost In Transition, about Glasgow’s lost property office, was commissioned for STV. Jack’s benefiting from the buzz around Scotland in the year of the Commonwealth Games and the independence referendum, first as a producer/director on BBC Scotland’s 12 Days, a 60-minute doc about the Games through the eyes of the people who have helped to make it happen. With fellow NFTS graduate Pete Akar, he’s made five films for Channel 4 News that have aired in the run-up to the referendum under the banner Conversations About Scotland.
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Directors
Left to right: Marvyn Benoit, Daniel Dewsbury, Jack Warrender
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HOT SHOTS 2014
Directors Left to right: Caroline Menzies, Adeyemi Michael, Lewis Arnold
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Directors
Caroline Menzies, 29 Producer/director: The Nick Caroline made her mark internationally with her first TV credit as assistant producer of a documentary about a deaf DJ from Hackney, which was picked up by Japanese broadcaster NHK. By the age of 26, she was producing Channel 4’s Secret Eaters and Secret Millions. For BBC Entertainment North, she helped to cast two new dragons for BBC2’s Dragons’ Den, and returned to the ob-doc fold when she secured access to the East Midlands Ambulance Trust and the University of Northampton, shooting and cutting a taster tape for what became Junior Paramedics. That P/D credit paved the way for her first ITV series, as self-shooting P/D on Renegade Pictures’ upcoming ITV series The Nick, in which she shadows the police in Brighton. BBC Entertainment North creative director David Williams says she has an “innate touch to find a way through and deliver a story”, while Renegade director of programmes Harry Lansdown praises Caroline’s “intelligence, personable nature and down-to-earth manner”. He adds: “She quickly builds trust, which allows her to get strong rushes. She is tenacious and thinks nothing of working all hours to get a story concluded.” Adeyemi Michael, 29 Director: Sodiq; The Road To Houston Adeyemi emerged as an exciting directing talent with his film Sodiq, which won the Grierson Student Award. The documentary, which tells the story of a Nigerian teenager on a London housing estate who dreams of becoming a doctor but ends up on trial for murder, was a deeply personal project for Adeyemi, who set up a football team on the estate with Sodiq. The Nigerian-born director also picked up an award for the film at the Africa International Film Festival (Afriff ). Darlow Smithson Productions subsequently chose him to help shoot The Road To Houston, an ob-doc series about the Shell Eco-Marathon. Executive producer Jane Sayers praises the “gritty, poignant, humbling and humorous” footage captured by assistant producer Adeyemi and director Lucy Fyson. NFTS head of documentary Dick Fontaine adds: “Yemi’s fierce determination to succeed, coupled with his unique experience in worlds that are misunderstood and misrepresented in our media, makes him a film-maker of vast importance to our culture. He is determined not to succumb to the tired media clichés trotted out to box up British people of African descent. He’s capable of making important films about anything – in other words, of taking on the world.” Lewis Arnold, 29 Director: Banana “Lewis’s three memorable short films caught my eye – intense, strange, sometimes ‘other’ and yet totally accessible both in terms of emotion and story,” reflects Nick Pitt, a producer at Red Planet Pictures. Pitt took a punt on Lewis and gave him his first TV credit: directing two episodes of series five of Misfits – not a bad place to start for the recent NFTS graduate. He fitted right in, Pitt recalls, adopting the E4 drama’s signature style yet making it his own through a combination of “energy, fastidious preparation, an effortless connection with actors and a sense of detailing in his storytelling”. Lewis was rewarded with the first block of Russell T Davies’ E4 drama Banana. Series producer Emily Feller praises his “professionalism at such a young age”, while Davies describes him as a “rare talent”. “Within a single day, he’d embedded himself at the heart of the team and become the life and soul of the production,” says Davies. “Great directors have to transmit until everyone on the team picks up the signals – Lewis transmits energy, optimism, humour and a lovely understanding of character.”
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HOT SHOTS 2014
Lucy Wilcox, 27 Producer/director, Firecracker Films “Lucy has left some of her graduate contemporaries trailing in her wake,” declares Firecracker Films head of programmes Jes Wilkins. A self-starter, Lucy was making web content in her teens and, at 19, produced ITV4 cycling adventure doc Take A Seat. “She’s a great advert for starting a career in TV early and learning on the job.” She’s been learning from the best, with a development stint at Dragonfly, working on shows including The Hotel and One Born Every Minute, leading to Firecracker’s mammoth hit Big Fat Gypsy Weddings. Lucy was the lead P/D on series three and sole director on a hard-hitting edition following a family over a year as they tussled with the council over their use of its land. She’s clearly drawn to challenging material, going on to direct Scrappers, a one-off 9pm C4 doc about a London scrapyard, and then Strippers, a three-part series filmed in Scottish strip clubs. “Lucy’s one of the most talented and dynamic young directors I have had the pleasure to work with,” says Wilkins. “She has the perfect combination of talent, a willingness to work hard and an ability to get on with everyone, from colleagues to contributors and commissioners.”
Directors
Lucie Duxbury, 29 Producer/director, The Garden As doc gigs go, producing Professor Gunther von Hagens’ restaging of the Crucifixion has got to be up there with the toughest. But Lucie pulled it off, managing key relationships and setting up filming in Germany, the UK and the US. She was rewarded with a producer role on The Garden’s flagship series 24 Hours In A&E. For series three, she delivered her first documentary edit – the series opener – rising to senior gallery P/D, managing two crews and two simultaneous edits. This led to her role on the indie’s latest fixed-rig series, 24 Hours In Police Custody, on which she’s a P/D managing a 61-camera, five-stream gallery covering a Luton police station. If that isn’t enough, she’s been notching up varied credits elsewhere, as P/D on C4’s Confessions Of A Teacher, edit producer on Discovery’s Dark Matters and writing and producing BBC4 doc Opera’s Fallen Women. “Lucie’s full of production flair and contagious enthusiasm, and can drive real change in the projects she does and make them better,” says The Garden executive producer Hamo Forsyth.
Left to right: Lucy Wilcox, Lucie Duxbury, Miles Blayden-Ryall
Miles Blayden-Ryall, 28 Producer/director, Special edition films Testimonials came in thick and fast for Miles, who has notched up director credits on three 9pm single docs for three different broadcasters. He announced himself as a significant talent with his BBC3 Fresh film A Special Kind Of Mum, which followed two mothers in their mid-20s who were born with disabilities. Controller Zai Bennett praises it as “expertly shot and moving”. Next, Mummy’s Little Murderer attracted 1.5 million to Channel 5. Commissioning editor Simon Raikes marvels at Miles’s “truly awesome array of skills: brilliant with contributors, a great shooter, a dogged journalist, a wonderful eye and a gifted storyteller. He’s a really exciting talent.” But he hit the jackpot with his third, Channel 4’s Meet The Police Commissioner, thanks to his access to Kent police commissioner Ann Barnes, knowing precisely when to step back and let her words and actions speak for themselves. “It’s exactly what I want for Cutting Edge,” says commissioner Emma Cooper. “Miles approached the filming with an impressive level of maturity and editorial clarity.” Mira King, managing director of Special Edition Films, speaks for many when she says: “Miles could be anywhere he wants to be in 10 years’ time.”
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Directors
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August 2014 | Broadcast Hot Shots | 15
HOT SHOTS 2014
People Just Do Nothing team Steve Stamp, 29 Hugo Chegwin, 29 Allan ‘Seapa’ Mustafa, 28 Lily Brazier, 28 Asim Chaudhry, 27
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Writers
It’s fair to say that only one of this year’s groups of Broadcast Hot Shots will be sharing a stage at the Leeds Festival this weekend: the team behind the BBC3 phenomenon People Just Do Nothing. Making a rare appearance out of character, Steve, Hugo, Allan, Lily and Asim are the key talent behind the mockumentary, which started out as five YouTube shorts before it became a BBC3 Comedy Feeds web pilot (it was the most shared iPlayer content in 2012). This year it became a full 4 x 30-minute series for BBC3. People Just Do Nothing is set at Brentfordbased pirate radio station Kurupt FM. The series follows station founders MC Grindah (Allan) and DJ Beats (Hugo), Grindah’s girlfriend Miche (Lily) and pals Chabuddy G (Asim), Steves (Steve) and Decoy (Dan Sylvester Woolford) as they play tunes, get high and get into scraps with rival players on the scene. The team started out with no designs on working in TV; Steve has said they made it for their own amusement after several nights spent “smoking weed and talking shit”. They sought to mine the rich seam of humour of the music scene – Allan worked as an MC, Hugo has produced Emeli Sande and Sam Smith, and they’ve all worked at pirate stations. Steve wrote and Asim filmed the initial shorts, which reached the desk of Ash Atalla, managing director of producer Roughcut Television, who has described it as “one of my favourite ever shows” – high praise from the producer of The Office and The IT Crowd. “Writers like Steve don’t come around so often,” he says. “He’s got a distinct voice and comes up with jokes a roomful of writers would never arrive at.” Steve has remained the lead writer and Asim oversees Chabuddy G’s material, with the rest of the cast chipping in ideas. Two previous Hot Shots oversaw the project: producer Jon Petrie (2012) and Skins’ Jack Clough (2011) as director. “These people certainly didn’t just do nothing,” says outgoing BBC3 controller Zai Bennett. “They wrote, directed and starred in their own series of brilliant comedy shorts. They are talented, authentic and very funny.” As well as being a flag-bearer for Danny Cohen’s ambitions for genuine “blue-collar” comedy on the BBC, it’s proved a test-bed for BBC3’s planned future, having become the first BBC-made comedy to premiere in full online in May ahead of its TV broadcast. The group have already played to 6,000 at Glastonbury, made regular appearances on Radio 1Xtra and produced ‘how to’ videos on DJing, MCing, producing and promoting music for dance music magazine Mixmag. At the risk of using an old-school reference from before these talented writer/performers were born, it looks like they’ve created the garage scene’s very own Spinal Tap.
Left to right: Steve Stamp, Hugo Chegwin, Allan ‘Seapa’ Mustafa, Lily Brazier, Asim Chaudhry,
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Writers
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August 2014 | Broadcast Hot Shots | 17
HOT SHOTS 2014
Writers 18 | Broadcast Hot Shots | August 2014
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Writers
Left to right: Freddy Syborn, Charlie Covell, Scott Payne
Freddy Syborn, 27 Writer, Cockroaches Jack Whitehall’s co-writer on Bad Education, Little Crackers and Backchat (plus gag writer for Mock The Week, 8 Out Of Ten Cats and sketch show Psychobitches) has broken out with his first solo comedy drama. Cockroaches is a high-concept series for ITV2 in which two 19-year-olds decide to have sex as they face doom in a nuclear war, only to survive and emerge from their basement 10 years later. As this suggests, Freddy’s strength lies in creating humour out of bleak situations; indeed, he’s devoted a whole book to the subject, A Good Bullet, which traces the line from James Joyce to Frankie Boyle. Already named by the Evening Standard as one of “London’s next generation of influential writers”, Freddy has 15 fringe plays to his name and has directed and acted in his own work. Next up, he’s developing Accidental, another sitcom for Big Talk, plus The Shot, a one-hour Warp Films drama for C4. “Freddy’s a freak,” marvels Big Talk chief executive Kenton Allen. “He looks about 17 and has the comedy chops of a much older and wiser writer. He is a real joy to work with and has a work ethic that would put Steve Jobs in the shade.” Charlie Covell, 29 Writer, Banana Banana, Russell T Davies’ E4 companion to his Channel 4 series Cucumber, features some bold new writers, but none quite as fresh as Charlie. An actress who has performed in Misfits and Peep Show and turned her hand to stand-up as a finalist in the Funny Women Awards, she only recently turned to writing. Impressing Davies and Red Production Company boss Nicola Shindler with her first script, she was swiftly handed a second. “Charlie scares me,” admits Davies. “She seems so experienced, so clever, so insightful, like she’s been writing for 30 years. She takes the toughest issues, skates around them with delight and then skewers them. Ruthlessly.” Red head of development Caroline Hollick describes Charlie as “an outstanding new talent” with “extraordinary potential as a screenwriter”. Eleven Films has optioned Dregs, Charlie’s script for C4’s 4Screenwriting scheme, while she has three original series in development with her writing partner Iain Weatherby: Boomers for Neal Street, Truelove for Hillbilly Films and Vultures for David Morrissey and Jolyon Symonds’ indie On The Corner Entertainment. Her own series can’t be far off. Scott Payne, 24 Writer, Rocket’s Island; Hollyoaks Hollyoaks has given many young writers their first taste of TV, but even so, Scott’s packed a lot into his tender years. Picked for the Lime Pictures series off the back of his sci-fi pilot Paracorp, which netted him the Alan Plater Screenwriting Prize (it’s now in development with My Daddy’s Company), he became a full-time member of the writing team. Recognising his strengths, Lime then added him to the team on CBBC’s Rocket’s Island and handed him his own episode. “Scott is one of those rare characters, a true storyteller,” says Rocket’s Island series producer Lucy Martin, who recalls being hooked on their first meeting by a tale he told of a magic wand. “Full of heart and warmth, his work always surprises and amuses me, and he’s always willing to go the extra mile to make sure the script is as strong as it can be.” Scott was recently one of eight writers on the CBBC interactive drama residential course and is now working on a TV adaptation of one of his calling cards, the radio fantasy adventure Professor Phlegm And The Lost Treasure Hunt, which he co-created with one of last year’s Hot Shots, Sophie Petzal.
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August 2014 | Broadcast Hot Shots | 19
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HOT SHOTS 2014
Writers
Left to right: Hannah George, Furquan Akhtar
Writers Hannah George, 27 Writer, Wolfblood; The Slammer; Justin’s House In just three years writing for TV, Hannah has penned 19 episodes of children’s shows, often working with her regular co-writer, 40-year-old James Whitehouse. Her break came on Lime Pictures’ Nickel odeon series The House Of Anubis, for which the pair wrote five episodes. But it’s on CBBC that they’ve really made their mark with four episodes of The Slammer, two of Justin’s House and eight of supernatural drama Wolfblood. “Hannah’s been a valuable member of the team from the beginning, collaborating with writers, producers and script editors to shape the tone and direction of the show,” says Wolfblood creator Debbie Moon. “She’s incredibly prolific and adaptable, writing comedy and drama both alone and with a writing partner.” Hannah’s background is in stand-up. Since winning the 2007 Paramount Comedy Student Comedian of the Year, she’s performed more
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than 400 shows. She’s secured regular work as a gagsmith for others, notching up credits for Radio 4 shows including The News Quiz and The Now Show, plus additional material for Miranda Hart’s latest tour. Hannah has no less than six projects in development, including solo comedy series S-Band for Hat Trick; Love, a comedy-drama for ITV Studios, co-written with George McCormick; and four more collaborations with Whitehouse for Raw TV, DLT Entertainment, Jelly Legs Productions and Wolfblood producer Foz Allan. Furquan Akhtar, 26 Script editor, Hollyoaks Furquan so impressed bosses as an editorial assistant on Coronation Street that he was swiftly promoted to a story associate, joining the storylining team in a Bafta-winning year for the show. Behind the scenes, he was burrowing away on his own ideas, sending spec scripts to the
BBC Writersroom and earning a place on the 2012 Creative Diversity Network’s Studio Comedy residential course, developing studio sitcom ideas. This led to the shadow scheme on Citizen Khan, learning the process of making the show and writing a non-TX episode. But 2014 has been his year. Not only has he joined the Hollyoaks team as a script editor, but he’s won a Radio 4 afternoon drama commission after his script, The Spoken Word, picked up the coveted Alfred Bradley Bursary Award. BBC development producer Henry Swindell praises Furquan’s “innate story sense” and “tenacious desire to get his stories told”, honed on Corrie and now taken to the next level on Hollyoaks. “His unique view of 21st-century Britain makes his scripts punch through where most don’t. He’s got his finger on the pulse but has both his feet planted firmly on the ground,” says Swindell. “His writing speaks, with great wit, of and to voices not often heard on British TV.”
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HOT SHOTS 2014
Kabir Jutla, 29 Head of post-production, Sequence Post “When Sequence founder Ben Foakes departed in 2013, Kabir was the obvious choice to fill his shoes,” says DCD Media Group director of production Elaine Day. The facilities company has just enjoyed its most profitable year to date and Day traces this to Kabir’s efforts. At 17, Kabir was the youngest person to be recruited onto Yorkshire Television’s training scheme. After an early freelance career with production secretary and production co-ordinator credits on BBC1’s Total Wipeout and Channel 4’s Big Brother, he moved to Mentorn as post-production workflow co-ordinator on shows ranging from C4 single Katie Piper: The Science Of Seeing to Sunset + Vine’s 120-part series America’s Cup Uncovered. As a post-producer at Sequence, he designed and implemented entire workflows for prod uctions, working with clients to deliver projects in budget and on time, and establishing longterm relationships. He’s credited with building Sequence to the point at which it was able to pull off Coldplay: Ghost Stories, a live concert film described as one of the most technologically-advanced music videos ever produced. Watching from afar, Foakes is impressed: “He runs the entire operation and is rapidly proving he has all the hallmarks of senior commercial management.” Thaddaios Yianni, 27 Junior dubbing mixer, Directors’ Cut Films Thaddaios came to Directors’ Cut on work experience and was immediately offered a runner’s job, but it was clear he was destined for bigger things. “By virtue of his likeable manner and effortless ability on Pro Tools, coupled with an enthusiasm to do whatever it took – days, nights, weekends – to finish a job properly, he soon became indispensable, forcing us to offer him a full-time audio position,” says managing director Mark Manning, who has him marked out as a future Bafta winner. Thaddaios has moved up from tracklaying, dialogue editing and voice recording, and is now mixing a variety of shows. He’s become the go-to mixer for South Bank Show producer/director Suzannah Wander, who notes the complexities of audio in highend arts docs. “He’s meticulous, well-prepared, thoughtful and attentive in adhering to the editor’s offline work prior to the mix, while confident enough to suggest enhancements and incorporate his own creative judgements.” Kate Marchant, 26 Post producer, Dock10 “Kate was thrown in at the deep end,” admits Dock10 head of post-production Paul Austin. Hired from Manchester’s Editz Post Production on a short-term contract as a post-production co-ordinator, Kate was soon tasked with running a new facility at MediaCityUK, The Landing, and managed two complex projects for Shine North: E4’s Geeks and BBC show
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Left to right: Kabir Jutla, Thaddaios Yianni, Kate Marchant, Breeze Lomas, Jules Woods, Chris Pearson
King Of Speed. Today, she is a full-time postproducer looking after Dock10’s biggest client in Salford, the BBC. “Kate has made an incredible difference to our business in a very short period of time,” says Austin, who notes her skill in managing schedules and dealing with changes as they happen. “She has the complete package of commercial acumen, technical understanding and an ability to deliver the right service and client care at all times. However complex and challenging a situation, she always manages to deliver the best possible performance.”
Breeze Lomas, 26 Vision mixer, BSkyB Breeze joined Sky three years ago with no vision-mixing experience, but has now become a key part of the team. “Her calm yet focused disposition, combined with a considerable technical aptitude, marked her out as a talent with significant potential,” recalls Anthea Angelis, senior manager of studio floors for Sky Production Services. Strong rapport with the cricket and Sky Sports News production teams over the past year led to Breeze’s first OB experience, mixing
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Craft & Post
Craft & Post
“Jules is fast realising his potential to become one of the country’s most sought-after mixers,” says Technicolor head of broadcast Louise Stevenson. Jules recently mixed series two of Channel 4’s Cardinal Burns, his first time working on a comedy. Director Ben Taylor says he was “an absolute joy to work with”, adding: “It was clear he loved the material as much as we did and wanted to push it as far as possible. The show aims to be visually rich and Jules designed his sound to match it.”
the presentation element of Sky Sports’ Baftawinning Ashes programming and working across Sky Sports News, which specifically asked her to join the team of technical spe cialists responsible for the channel’s visionmixing infrastructure. At the start of 2014, she filled an unexpected vacancy in the vision-mixing team on Sky Sports 1’s live Saturday morning show Game Changers. “The challenge of assimilating into a well-oiled production mid-season cannot be underestimated,” says Angelis. “Breeze did so with her now customary coolness.”
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Jules Woods, 27 Re-recording mixer, Technicolor The youngest council member of the Association of Motion Picture Sound, Jules has worked in film and TV sound for almost 12 years, since he left school at 16. Starting out on theatrical foreign reversioning for Paramount, Warner Brothers and Sony, he has since worked on flagship ITV dramas Poirot, Marple, Lewis, Endeavour and Midsomer Murders. Last year, he mixed Dummy Jim, a film aimed at the deaf and hardof-hearing, on which he stimulated the sense of touch by using low-frequency sounds.
Chris Pearson, 29 Camera operator/editor, Sky News Chris started on Sky’s apprentice scheme and 18 months later has stepped up from short-form packages for Sky News to longform documentaries. A camera operator and editor in the field, he also rotates in the edit suites and recently shot and edited Brazil’s Children for Sky News and then edited it in London for Sky 1. He also edited Battered Britain: Storm Nation for the two channels and covers multi-camera OBs on big events. “His skill is in making it look easy,” says Sky News head of operations Jackie Faulkner. “He never panics or seems to be under any pressure, which makes all around him feel comfortable in the knowledge that a piece will make the deadline. He is an inspiration to all he works with.” Sky News head of resources Lynn Hobbs adds: “His multi-level contribution to the business is outstanding and he is already regarded as a role model.” Ben Hills, 27 Online editor/ post-production supervisor, Popkorn Television “Ben has the quiz zical mind of an explorer,” says Popkorn creative director Colin Moxon, who marvels at his ability to master graphics, editing and shooting. While developing his skills as an editor, Ben set up an edit-share system, revolutionising the way data is backed up and stored. Since becoming an in-house online editor, he has cut documentaries including Channel 5 series London: The Inside Story, Killers Behind Bars and recent single My Violent Child. “Ben rises to every challenge and is never afraid to roll up his sleeves,” says Popkorn managing director Rory Wheeler. “When the Canon C300 was released, he hired one and asked if we would let him shoot footage himself to get to know the camera’s limitations. He was just an edit assistant at the time.” Another string to Ben’s bow is his establishment of Prime Cut Digital, an internal branding agency that makes bespoke online content for digital clients. “He’s a true all-rounder for the digital age,” says Moxon.
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HOT SHOTS 2014
Craft & Post Left to right: Dave White Maja Zamojda, David Moon, Devan Vimal
Nick Perry, 29 Senior editor, The Farm North It is, says Farm North director of operations Brian Hardman, “almost unprecedented” for an editor as young as Nick to be chosen as one of the six ‘A-list’ editors for the Winter Olympics and the World Cup. It’s even more impressive that Nick joined the Farm less than two years ago with no network broadcast credits to his name, subsequently honing his skills on Match Of The Day, Formula 1 coverage and graphics sequences for Football Focus. “It is very difficult for new talent to break into a well-established pool of experienced sport editors,” says director of operations Brian Hardman. “To get to this level is exceptional.” Lead editor Paul Farmer reckons Nick’s skills as a musician might explain his sense of pacing,
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timing and mixing. Where some editors would rush in, he says, Nick takes a measured approach. “Nick easily recovers this time with his deceptive speed at the controls. A calm and reassuring ease pervades the edit suite, making him the editor of choice, often over far more experienced editors.” Dave White, 29 Head of cameras, CTV Outside Broadcasts From the Baftas to the London Marathon and The Boat Race, from the Ashes and the Ryder Cup to the royal wedding and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, there are few major live events that Dave hasn’t been involved in since joining CTV as a camera assistant in 2007. “Dave is equally at home guaranteeing a large-scale, 40-camera sports event or a modest six-camera light-entertainment show,” says CTV international business director Bill Morris. Cerebral and articulate, but always with a sense of humour, Dave is, says Morris, “a wise head on young shoulders”. He adds: “Technical
managers adore working with him, as his meticulous planning and management skills take any jeopardy out of the equation. He excels as an operator, being equally at home with hand-held or pedestal cameras, and is committed to the continual training and development of his team” Managing director Barry Johnstone says: “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s sitting in my chair within 10 years.” Maja Zamojda, 29 Director of photography NFTS graduate Maja has amassed an impressive set of drama credits as a director of photo graphy. These include the first block of the final Skins series, Skins Redux, for director Charles Martin, episodes of Skins creator Bryan Elsley’s recent Channel 4 series Dates for directors Philippa Langdale and Charles Sturridge, and Fresh Meat series three for directors Gordon Anderson and Jamie Jay Johnson. Her break came with an EU-sponsored place on the prestigious Budapest Cinematography
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Craft & Post
Masterclass, where her graduate animation short Playing Ghost was picked up by more than 20 festivals worldwide. She’s just wrapped her first major feature film, Jet Trash, and worked on series two of BBC1 drama series The Village. “Maja has two great skills: she is sensitive and decisive,” says Sturridge. “The second is the more important. As we approached the last hour of our shoot, I told my first AD: ‘There are three very small shots I need and I’m going to shoot them in the last 10 minutes of the day. No one else will care about them except me but they are important to the edit.’ I knew Maya would not panic. We shot all five, running from set-up to set-up, all pre-lit. All made the final cut.” David Moon, 29 Freelance editor David was clearly going places when he picked up a Broadcast Digital Award four years ago for editing Channel 4’s pioneering multiplatform event Operation: Surgery Live.
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But it’s in the past two years that he’s really made his mark. As editor of ITV2’s successful entertainment format The Big Reunion, he’s steered the show towards a Bafta nomination and proved his talent as a music editor. “Dave was talked about in high regard but little did I know that I had unearthed a gem of an editor,” says series producer/director Kevin Lane, himself an ex-editor with high demands of his production crew. Describing David as his “go-to editor” and praising his “terrific timing” and “soft touch” when polishing a show, Lane adds: “No matter what situation you find yourself in, Dave will always find a way through, constantly reviewing and fine-tuning a story. He completely understands how to use and edit music, always making it fit the scene and turn into a ‘score’ rather than an after-thought ‘bed’.” David Sumnall, managing director of Middlechild Productions, makes a bold claim for David’s future: “I’ve no doubt that in 10 years time, Dave will be cutting the best shows on TV.”
Devan Vimal, 28 Post-production producer, Splice TV In the past seven years, Devan has learned his trade at many of London’s biggest post firms, including Molinare, Prime Focus and now Splice TV, where he’s praised for managing freelancers, staff and clients efficiently and diligently. Similarly, his credits span broadcasters, from Sky 1’s Little Crackers to E4 comedy The Midnight Beast, BBC1’s Claimed And Shamed and Channel 4’s How Not To Get Old, plus series for Food Network, PBS and Discovery. “Coming from a machine-room background at such a young age has proved an invaluable asset,” says Splice senior post-production manager Ramit Anchal. “He really enjoys looking after projects, and the enthusiasm comes across in his work. His attention to detail is exquisite.” Having become a sought-after producer, Anchal reckons Devan has management potential. “He’s already picking up projects in pre-production and quote stage so clients are keen to work with him from the very beginning,” he says.
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HOT SHOTS 2014
Sarah Jane Cass, 28 Senior talent agent, Somethin’ Else “Sarah Jane’s a force of nature,” says Telegraph Hill founder Barry Pilling (himself one of last year’s Hot Shots). “With so many talent agents clinging to old business practices, Sarah Jane stands out as an incredibly sharp professional willing to embrace new business models and opportunities for her clients – not just with lip service, but with bold, brave actions that work in the changing media landscape.” On Telegraph Hill’s The Fox Problem, she fought for her client, Gemma Cairney, to be both presenter and producer to ensure a commercially funded project maintained a strong editorial line. “Sarah Jane’s personality shines through in every meeting and it’s clear to see she’s on route to becoming a huge name in her field,” says Pilling. Sarah Jane has also secured two BBC3 docs for Cairney and raised the profile of clients including TV psychologist Emma Kenny, MTV presenter Will Best and Newsround’s Martin Dougan. “I admire her dexterity in dealing with toplevel talent, commissioners, producers and others,” says Somethin’ Else managing director Steve Ackerman. “She carries out all tasks with energy, passion and a genuine desire to excel.” Salim Rahman, 27 Producer, LipSync Creative “In this golden age of TV, having a strong promo has become more important than ever,” says LipSync Creative agency director Louise Kean-Wood. “The creation of these materials is now as intrinsic to a TV show as a trailer is to a big new feature film.”
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Business
Josie Grierson, 28 Children’s programme co-ordinator, Channel 5 Scriptwriter, promo editor, talent scout, scheduler, commissioner, vision mixer, floor manager, production manager… Josie has repeatedly shown her versatility at the heart of Channel 5 children’s brand Milkshake!. Joining as a production assistant in 2010, Josie was swiftly promoted to her current role, which spans commissioning, scheduling and in-house production. She’s written for flagship magazine the Milkshake Show and animation Little Lodgers, and been floor manager for Milkshake Bop Box. She hasn’t taken her eye off the bigger picture, helping to steer the programming block to its highest viewing figures in more than a decade. And she’s now taking the show on the road as production manager of its latest theatre show. Channel 5 head of children’s Jessica Symons says: “Josie truly deserves to be recognised for her passion and total dedication to providing the highest-quality television programmes for young viewers. Incredibly hardworking and calm under pressure, Josie is bound for great things, and could easily be running her own programming department or her own production company within the next 10 years.”
Enter Salim, one of the best promo-cutters in the business, who has carved out a niche as a producer of truly striking international promos, often working with rushes and unmixed audio to sell the creative strengths of shows such as Broadchurch, In The Flesh, Utopia, MasterChef, Don’t Lose The Money and The Tunnel. “He oversees the creative process, the marketing process and the post and delivery – he is a true end-to-end creative TV producer,” says LipSync Creative development manager Susan Finlayson-Sitch. In a decade at LipSync, Salim spent three years in VT sharpening his technical knowledge
before switching to runner and now promo producer. He’s at the top of his game. Tiffany Brown, 27 Senior agent, John Noel Management Two distinctive comedy talents, Karl Pilkington and Morgana Robinson, owe much of their TV success to the tireless efforts of Tiffany. Rising from agent John Noel’s PA six years ago to custodian of some of his premier talent is no small feat. Single-handedly developing from scratch a diary system for bookings and invoices, now in use across the company, she rose to junior agent and devised the John Noel Comedy Showcase nights to promote new talent.
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Business
Left to right: Josie Grierson, Sarah Jane Cass, Salim Rahman, Tiffany Brown, Holly Hodges
Noel praises the “tenacious thinking, guidance and instinctive deal-making skills” that have helped talent to thrive. Establishing Pilkington as a face of Sky 1, Tiffany has also guided his writing career and introduced him internationally. Robinson, meanwhile, has landed plum roles in BBC2’s House Of Fools, Sky 1’s Psychobitches, Channel 4’s Toast Of London and the BBC iPlayer Comedy Shorts. Tiffany is now supporting the comic actress in her move into film. “Although Tiffany’s firm, she’s fair,” says Moaning Of Life executive producer Krishnendu Majumdar. “She works as an ally and sees the bigger picture for her clients.”
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Sky head of factual Celia Taylor agrees that Tiffany’s directness is a strength and says she is fun to negotiate with: “She gives agents a good name.” Holly Hodges, 26 Senior sales executive, Twofour Twofour managing director Melanie Leach knew Holly was “indispensable” in the rights business when she observed how she took charge of distribution – from negotiation through to the final delivery of materials, including material reversioning and marketing. “This was an unheard-of model in distribution,” Leach notes, impressed at Holly signing up 150 channels,
including Channel 5, for factual format Born To Kill, and securing a deal for Storage Hoarders to air on Foxtel in Australia. This was all before the launch of Twofour Rights, after which she has established herself as the go-to person for broadcasters across Australasia and Asia, and the face of Twofour at trade shows. “Holly is a vibrant sales executive with a comprehensive market knowledge that belies her years,” says Leach. “Her intimate knowledge of the catalogue, combined with her vivacious personality and attention to detail, will ensure she continues her journey to become one of the UK’s leading lights in distribution.”
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HOT SHOTS 2014 Rebecca McEwan, 28 Junior business affairs and commercial manager, Icon Films Rebecca wasn’t initially destined for business affairs. Just nine months after joining Icon Films as a runner in 2010, she became a production co-ordinator on River Monsters, co-ordinating the indie’s first 3D shoot in Botswana. Put forward for Skillset’s TV Futures Programme to develop her potential further, she found herself drawn to business affairs and became PA to commercial director Lucy Middelboe and the co-ordinator of the business affairs and commercial department. Promoted last year to her current role, Rebecca has worked across Icon’s production and distribution contract slate, development, talent and royalties agreements, and the company’s first Canadian co-production treaty. She also oversees strategy for the River Monsters brand, looking after its 150,000strong Facebook community and managing the indie’s first steps into brand licensing, merchandising and theatre tours. “The indie production world is fraught with obstacles and learning to navigate a careful and clear path through them is part of Rebecca’s skills,” says Icon managing director Laura Marshall, who admires her ability to understand the needs of every part of the organisation thanks to her grounding in both the creative and commercial sides of the business.
Grace Owen, 24 Founder, Telly Talk London Grace has worked as a runner and production co-ordinator at Discovery and held researcher and development roles at Twofour, Blink Films and Outline Productions, but it’s what she’s done in her spare time that we’re focusing on here. At 22, Grace set up Telly Talk London, a networking event for runners and researchers, single-handedly producing and hosting five events and co-organising one in Cardiff, plus doing all her own PR and venue negotiation. As a result, 10 new entrants to TV have secured their first runner credits and she’s raised more than £2,700 for the charity Mind. Her efforts netted her a nomination for ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ at the 2014 National Diversity Awards. For the past year, she’s been talent co-ordinator at indie Betty and is now looking at more entrepreneurial roles in the broadcast and digital space. She has impressed BBC production talent pool manager Don Kong with her “passion, drive and commitment” to her own career and to helping her peers: “She is a champion of new talent and an inspiration to others who want to get into, or get ahead in, the industry.”
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Business
Emily Jones, 28 Publicist, UKTV When Sir David Attenborough insists that you, and you alone, handle PR for his show, you must be doing something right. Emily has been making waves over the past couple of years at UKTV, devising high-profile stunts such as the creation of a 15ft model of a hedgehog on Clapham Common to promote Attenborough’s series Natural Curiosities. Emily honed her PR skills at the Edinburgh Fringe, on Big Brother at C4 and overseeing the UK publicity for the US casts of Nickelodeon shows Victorious, Big Time Rush and iCarly. At UKTV, she helped to generate 131 items of coverage (estimated PR value: £3m) for Yesterday series Secret Life Of…, in which paintings of key historical figures were updated with the help of a historian and a team of digital artists. This culminated in the live reveal on BBC Breakfast of a £250,000 Constable painting to a shocked owner who had thought it a fake – delivering another £3m of PR value to UKTV. Group publicity manager Nicola Rowley says Emily has “impressed me with her talent-handling skills, creativity and ability to over-deliver on all campaigns she has worked on”.
Left to right: Rebecca McEwan, Emily Jones, Grace Owen
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Business
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HOT SHOTS 2014
Sabina Smitham, 26 Creative producer, ChannelFlip “Sabina is everything a Hot Shot should be: ambitious, progressive, creative and autonomous.” ChannelFlip creative director Jamie Lennox is effusive in his praise for his colleague, who previously worked her way up from production trainee at Talkback Thames to digital producer at Fremantle Media on global brands The X Factor and Got Talent, plus online cookery channel Sorted Food. At ChannelFlip, Sabina has overseen the company’s biggest brand deal to date for the Broadcast Digital Award-nominated Krave Tweet When You Eat campaign. Kellogg’s was sufficiently impressed to commission three more videos from ChannelFlip in the US, and she’s now working on a campaign that stretches across the UK, France and Italy. Noting that agencies regularly ask for Sabina by name, Lennox says he shares her presentations internally as “inspirational examples of what we’re taking out to market”. Managing director Claire Tavernier, who has worked with her at both companies, says she has developed “from a talented researcher into a polished and assured digital producer”. She adds: “Sabina is creative, detail-oriented, fast and able to work with limited budgets to produce the highest-quality content. She is one of the brightest talents of the digital production world in the UK today.”
Digital
James Loveridge, 27 Channel manager, comedy, Little Dot Studios James is one of the most experienced YouTube channel managers anywhere, having run North One’s World Rally Championship and Fifth Gear channels, policing all user-uploaded content, as far back as 2009. He joined All3Media in 2012, a year later moving to Andy Taylor’s digital splinter group Little Dot Studios, where he’s played to his strengths in comedy. Managing a portfolio of YouTube channels centred on established brands including Peep Show, Fresh Meat, Alan Carr: Chatty Man, Balls Of Steel and The Jonathan Ross Show, he also runs Dead Parrot, an original channel featuring inhouse format YouTube Comment Reconstructions and his thirdparty commissions from The Poke and The Fratocrats. Underpinning this is his second career as a stand-up comedian, gigging regularly on the London circuit and playing the Edinburgh Fringe for the past two years. Taylor praises his “infectious” enthusiasm for comedy, which, coupled with a strong technical understanding of how YouTube works, makes him perfectly placed to get quality content to a wide audience. “James is a great example of the next generation coming into media,” says Taylor. “He is a commissioner, broadcaster, director, producer, performer and scheduler of comedy all in one.” Robbie Spargo, 26 Head of YouTube Activities, Fremantle Media Honing his skills alongside Sabina at Fremantle Media, Robbie has risen to a lead role in the company’s digital and branded entertainment vision. Since heading up its YouTube activities in January last year, he has grown viewership of its 150+ channels by 50%. More than 100 of these channels are less than three years old and he launched 35 of them last year alone. Robbie led the launch of the first global channels for The X Factor and Got Talent franchises, amalgamating the best viral content from their local editions and securing more than 30,000 subscribers for Got Talent in six months. He has also developed a bespoke tool to more accurately capture revenue data from YouTube activity. “The burgeoning area of digital distribution can be confusing or even frightening to many, but Robbie manages to explain complex areas with great clarity and enthusiasm,” says Fremantle Media chief executive of digital and branded entertainment Keith Hindle. “He has continually innovated the ways in which we bring new content to the platform, and is an evangelist of a digital transformation that is of critical importance to our industry.”
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Digital
Left to right: Sabina Smitham, James Loveridge, Robbie Spargo
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HOT SHOTS 2014
Digital 32 | Broadcast Hot Shots | August 2014
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Digital
Left to right: Jo Hutchinson, Jake Lea-Wilson, Maria Martin
Jo Hutchinson, 28 Digital marketing manager, ITV Studios Jo has been at the heart of ITV Studios’ mission to transform its web presence since joining two years ago. Among her heavy lifting was the transfer of more than 4,000 programme pages, artwork and video files from the original website to itvstudios. com. She also played a key role in the development of new app Watch Anywhere, for clients to download shows to watch offline. Jo took it upon herself to grow the Twitter followers of @itvstudios from 200 to more than 3,300 and created social media campaigns around key titles including Breathless and Tricked. Her work for MipTV this year, promoting drama The Great Fire, used a mixture of email marketing, social media, animated digital ads and web pages to build buzz, and she’s now gearing up for next year’s launch of the Thunderbirds reboot. This all builds on her management of digital marketing at BBC natural history brand BBC Earth, where she grew the web community from 100,000 to more than 2 million. “Jo has brought a level of expertise and focus that was previously missing, and a relentless drive and passion for digital marketing,” says ITVS marketing director Adrian Last. “In the coming years, we’ll see her name in lights as a big innovator in engaging audiences around content.” Jake Lea-Wilson, 29 Digital producer, Keo Films “Jake’s going to run TV one day,” reckons Keo Films head of development Colleen Flynn (a Hot Shot in 2012). “He’s one of the friendliest and most creative faces in our company and is the go-to man for everything.” Jake is also most likely the only one of this year’s Hot Shots to have helped to change EU law. Managing 12 European websites, he pushed hard on the Fish Fight campaign and organised more than 225,000 emails to be sent to MEPs all over Europe. For his peers, it’s all part of a determination to master every facet of multiplatform production. Grounded in the docs scene on the Channel 4 production trainee scheme and in the BBC radio science department, he’s since turned his hand to graphic design, motion graphics, website coding, project management, filming, editing, grading, researching, pitching and producing (phew). He also helped to secure BBC3 commission Bangkok Airport and content for Yahoo! and Waitrose TV. “Jake is a pragmatist who would prefer to create things rather than talk about them,” says Edi Smockum, managing director of ThinkBigger!, which manages the C4 scheme. “He’s got an easygoing nature and a brilliant, creative mind.” Maria Martin, 28 Content acquisition executive, Blinkbox Movies Eight months after joining video-on-demand provider Blinkbox, Maria was promoted to exec in recognition of efforts that have led to her negotiating, signing and delivering more than 15 deals, from hard-hitting docs to pre-school kids’ shows. She’s brought Arrow Films into the fold, not only with its world cinema and arthouse movie archive but also its Nordic Noir TV series The Killing and The Bridge, and documentary distributor Dogwoof, whose titles include Blackfish and The Act Of Killing. Maria has brought skills honed in the international market at Viasat Broadcasting, where she liaised with studios and independent distributors from CBS and MGM to Endemol and Shine Reveille, and played a key role in the launch of Viasat’s first African channel, Viasat 1. “Maria is a true expert in digital rights and content,” says Blinkbox Movies director of content acquisition and sales Douglas Davies. “She has a fantastic knowledge base and can anticipate issues and negotiate deals that maximise digital revenue for both parties.”
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HOT SHOTS 2014
Last Year’s Class
The class of 2013 Last year’s Hot Shots featured 56 of British TV’s most-talented under-30s, from producers, directors and writers to digital specialists and the young business people cutting the deals Production MEL BEZALEL Development producer, Me & You Productions SAM BROWN Location series producer, Raw TV BECKY CASEY Assistant producer, ZKK; Firecracker Films SOPHIE CLAYTON-PAYNE Assistant producer, Films of Record AMY DALLMEYER Development producer/producer, Fresh One
JEREMY COLE Producer/director, Lemonade Money
ROMANA WALICZEK Post-production producer, Splice TV
IFTEKHAR GATAR Director, Coming Up
CANDICE WARD Motion graphics designer, Channel 5 News
RACHEL MARTIN DV director, Maverick Television STEVEN METCALFE Producer/director, Leftbank Pictures TOM PULLEN Producer/director, Raw TV
Business GERALD CASEY Scheduler, Dave LAUREN CATHCART Co-ordinator, BBC Academy College of Production
LUKE SNELLIN Director, Coming Up
SHERI CLADD Research and insight manager, factual and lifestyle, UKTV
EMILY DOLLMAN Development producer, Whizz Kid Entertainment
EMMA YOUNG Producer/director, Firecracker Films
HARRY GAMSU Acquisitions manager, Warner Bros International Television
RACHEL HARRIS Senior assistant producer, Outline Productions
Writers
BECKY GREGORY-CLARKE Technologist, BBC R&D
CLAIRE HARTNETT Assistant producer, BBC Documentaries KIMBERLEY HIKAKA Head of production, Carnival Films CLAIRE JUDGE Assistant producer, Nine Lives Media
LEVI DAVID ADDAI Writer/showrunner, Youngers HENRIETTa & JESSICA ASHWORTH Writers, Fresh Meat ROBERT GOLDSBROUGH Writer, Holby City; EastEnders JONATHAN NEIL Writer, Darby And Joan
HANNAH LIVINGSTON Assistant producer, Firecrest Films
SOPHIE PETZAL Writer, Wolfblood; Hetty Feather
CLARE MCPARLAND Producer, Doubleband Films
HANNAH SNOWDEN Story editor, Hollyoaks
JOE MYERSCOUGH Producer/director, Windfall Films
Kirstie Swain Writer, In The Flesh
EDWARD PHILLIPS Producer/development producer, Twofour
Craft & Post
DAN SMITH Producer, Channel 5 News/ITN TIANNAH VIECHWEG Assistant producer, BBC Factual Entertainment North JAMES WOOLLEY Development producer, 12 Yard Productions
Directors HOLLY COCKER Producer/director, Markthree Media
LUCY JOHNSTONE Tracklayer, Envy DAVID GONZALEZ LOZANO Colourist and online editor, Onsight ED MOORE Director of photography, freelance ALEX ROOK Visual artist, Objective Productions EDWARD SUTTON Sound engineer, Soho Square Studios
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EMMA MURRAY Research assistant, BBC3 ROXANA REHMAN Channel executive, PBS America RACHEL TOWNSLEY Marketing manager, EMEA, ITV Studios
Digital STEVE GARDNER Digital producer, ITV News PHIL HARPER Communities producer, Truthloader TOM JENKINS YouTube channel manager, The Connected Set MARK MACDONALD Channel manager, Little Dot Studios RAJIV NATHWANI Social media manager, BBC1 AZ NEWMAN Creative developer, The Project Factory BARRY PILLING Founder, Telegraph Hill ASHA WOLSTENHOLME VoD operations manager, Channel 5
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HOT SHOTS 2014