SCOT- LAND - Scottish Screen

made in
SCOT-
LAND
TV

made in scotlanD TV
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scotland
makes great
made in scotlanD TV
tv
From Mountain to the Ooglies, Hope Springs
to Shrink Rap, Gary Tank Commander to
One Night in Emergency: comedy, drama,
factual, entertainment, children’s …. all great
programmes, all made in Scotland.
Production companies like RDF Scotland,
TernTV, Wellpark, Finestripe, Skyline,
Shed Media, MTP and Super Umami – all
successful, all based in Scotland. They
are all profiled here, along with Scotland’s
great individual talent – producers, writers,
actors and directors, like Simon Donald,
Bill Paterson, Bryan Elsley, Dawn Steele
and Gregory Burke. Together they make
Scotland the best place to make the best TV.
With a new channel in BBC ALBA, a reborn
stv and a significant increase in network
production through the BBC, Scotland is
presenting even more opportunities to
make great television. And through 4iP and
the Digital Media IP Fund, RSAMD and the
New Entrants Training Scheme, Scotland
is at the forefront of the digital revolution,
creating opportunities for telling stories in
different formats on different platforms and
equipping the next generation of creative
and technical talent.
And Scotland’s cities, towns and amazing
land and seascapes act as a magnet for UK
and international producers looking for that
perfect location. We have the best talent,
the most innovative businesses, state of the
art facilities, world class locations and a ‘can
do’ approach to doing business.
This brochure gives you a flavour of what
Scotland has to offer. If you want to know
more, then get in touch with Scottish Screen
at www.scottishscreen.com.
Welcome to Scotland.
Ken Hay
Chief Executive
Scottish Screen
August 2009
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made in scotlanD TV
Bill Paterson
From Crown Court to Law and
Order, Bill Paterson is one of
Scotland’s best loved and most
adaptable performers. The
Glasgow-born actor’s film CV is highly
impressive, including roles in The
Killing Fields, A Private Function, Truly
Madly Deeply and Miss Potter, right up
to Simon Pegg’s 2008 comedy How To
Lose Friends & Alienate People.
Yet it’s his track record for television
that’s makes him a household name.
Auf Wiedersehen Pet, The Singing
Detective, Traffik and The Crow Road
have all gone down in the annals of TV
history and with recent work in Sea of
Souls, Little Dorrit and the 2009 BAFTA
winner Criminal Justice, Paterson has
maintained his reputation as one of
Scotland hardest-working performers.
“Some previewers were quite snooty
about Law and Order when it first went
out, only to reassess it when the public
embraced it.” says Paterson of the hit
series in which he plays the role of
George Castle. “I’d dipped in and out of
the American version, and my instinct
was that the format would work this
side of the Atlantic if it was given a
chance.”
“The real strength of the show is that
they tell you a complete story in one
sitting. And I think Bradley Walsh has
not only re-invented the stoical cop,
he’s surprised the critics. But that’s not
unusual. I remember when The Singing
Detective started, it took a few episodes
before word really got out, mainly
thanks to Mary Whitehouse. And when
they did a press preview for the very
first series of Auf Wiedersehen Pet, only
one journalist turned up. It was word of
mouth that made that series”
Paterson has proved his ability to carry
a show on many occasions, but he’s
also a master of the smaller role, with
his recent experience as Clement Atlee
in Into The Storm as a good example.
“It’s really just a vignette in the context
of the piece; the programme is a followup
to The Gathering Storm. This one
was directed by Thaddeus O’Sullivan,
with Brendan Gleeson superb as
Churchill forming his war government
in 1940. At first, I didn’t know why
they’d asked me - I thought, ‘I don’t
look or sound like Attlee’ - yet the result
is, at least pretty physically accurate.
I surprised myself. I might even have
surprised Clement Attlee!”
Paterson has also added a few more
strings to his bow with the publication
of his bestselling memoir Tales
From The Back Green, and writing
Astonishing Archie, a radio play
performed on BBC radio with Stanley
Baxter.
“The book came about almost by
accident as a result of radio broadcasts
I’d made looking back on my childhood
and youth. People heard them and
asked if they were published, so they
were collected together in a book,”
says Paterson. “With the play, it was
very much about a memory I had of
the culture clash of music in the 1950’s
when Elvis arrived. Stanley recognised
that, and it was a joy to record it with
him. We ended up on Radio 4’s ‘Pick of
the Week’ though I think it might have
been a quiet week.”
But perhaps Paterson’s best loved
role was as Dickie Bird in Bill Forsyth’s
Comfort and Joy, as a local disk-jockey
who finds his true calling as a mediator
in a turf-war between rival ice-cream
manufacturers.
“We had the 25th anniversary
celebrations recently, and lots of people
told me how much they loved the
film, but when it came out, it was far
from being Bill’s most popular film. It
opened in the same weeks as the news
broke of the deaths in an ice cream
gang feud in Glasgow long after we had
filmed. But understandably it seemed
that the film was an ill judged response
to people being torched to death. It was
a tragic coincidence. In fact, it was really
a very personal film about loneliness
and relationships, and I think it was very
much an autobiographical piece for Bill
Forsyth. So to be criticised for not being
about the realities of life in Glasgow,
was like criticising The Ladykillers
for not being an accurate account of
organised crime. I think people can see
the film much more clearly now.”
Paterson recently worked on a BBC
drama, teaming up with Mark Gatiss
for Spanish Flu: The Forgotten Fallen,
which looks at the 1918 flu pandemic
and its affect on Manchester. It’s now
over three decades since Paterson
was honing his craft on TV dramas like
Crown Court, but he’s lost none of his
enthusiasm for the medium.
“On Spanish Flu, we were working
pretty much non-stop on a very tight
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made in scotlanD TV
production budget; it was tough but
engrossing and that’s how a lot of TV is
made these days. There’s no fat on those
schedules! With Crown Court, we had to
rehearse several different endings, and
then play the one the live jury chose.
The scripts were open-ended, so that
the jury, made up of members of the
public, would be able to judge each case
for themselves, then we played out the
appropriate ending.”
“That was a high-pressure way to
learn about TV acting, because if you
forgot your lines and had to busk it
from the witness box. It was easy for
the barristers. All these bits of paper
in their hand were usually the script!
But the witnesses were on their own.
Actors loved doing it, and it was a plum
job at the time,” he says.
“Over the years I’ve been lucky and
film and TV have served me well.
Even though its got more and more
unpredictable, it’s still a wonderful
privilege and only way I know to pay the
mortgage.”
“Film and TV have served me well.”
- Bill Paterson
Gone Fishing
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made in scotlanD TV
Wild at Heart
Monarch of the Glen
DawnSTEELE
Dawn Steele has become one of
Scotland’s most popular actresses
on shows like Monarch of The
Glen and Sea of Souls, and she’s now
continuing her successful run with her
role as Alice Collins in ITV’s Wild At
Heart. Swapping the highland romps of
Glenbogle for a location shoot in South
Africa, she’s enjoying the change of scene
that the Wild at Heart shoot provides.
“This is my second year on Wild at Heart,
so my character Alice is fairly settled at
Leopards Den by now. She’s a vet with a
ten-year-old daughter and now she’s the
girlfriend of Danny Travanion (Stephen
Tomkinson). This year sees Alice and
Danny struggling with their working life
and their love life; it’s never easy for
her, particularly as her brother Rowan
turned up last year and now works at the
opposing Game Park,” says Steele.
“The shoot is going well, it’s great to be
back on the show, I love being part of it!
I’ve already moved a herd of elephants,
bottle-fed a baby leopard and saved
a white lion, and its only week two!
There’s not a lot of down time but at the
weekends I go to the gym and we all
meet up and eat,” she says. “Obviously
if I have friends and family around, and
I have the weekend off, we try and see
more of this amazing country; last year I
was lucky enough to get the time to go to
Mozambique and Cape Town.”
Steele’s African adventures don’t mean
that she’s forsaken her homeland; as an
accomplished stage actress, she also had
a number of successes on-stage, treading
the boards in high-profile productions
like David Harrower’s Olivier-winning
play Blackbird, and revitalising the role
of Suzy Kettles in the National Theatre
of Scotland’s production of John Byrne’s
Tutti Frutti.
“Theatre and television are two totally
different mediums; I find theatre to be
physically harder, but it’s great that you
get four weeks rehearsal exploring the
play and your character. TV is all very
technical and on Wild at Heart, it is all
about the animals!” she says. “I nearly
didn’t do the role of Una in Blackbird as
I thought I would never be able to learn
all the lines. But it is such a fantastic
piece of writing that I really had to do it. I
found the role difficult emotionally every
night, but such a buzz for me knowing
that I had achieved a goal at the end of
the play. We really made people think
with this piece; I was very proud of it and
I loved working with Robert Daws and
our director David Grindley, and perhaps
oddly given the nature of the piece, we
had a good laugh too whilst doing it!”
With the BBC’s Tutti Frutti just released
on video for the first time, the series’
many fans can now compare Emma
Thompson’s version of Suzy Kettles with
the one that Steele brought to the stage.
Taking on an iconic role is always a tough
assignment, but Steele won rave reviews
for her part in the touring production.
“I had a blast doing Tutti Frutti! It was
such a great experience. A great cast,
a fantastic script and great music too,”
says Steele. “I tried not to feel too
daunted about playing such a well known
role, and tried to approach it as a new
character in a new play, which it was in a
sense, in that it was the first time it had
been done on the stage.”
Steele recently added another string to
her bow with a stint as a guest presenter
on stv’s The Hour, but although she
adapted well to the change of medium,
Steele has no plans to reinvent herself as
an armchair interviewer.
“Actually, my friend is the producer
on The Hour so I did it as a favour! I
enjoyed the experience, and although it
was good fun, it was a little scary. It’s a
bit weird just being ‘you’!” she says. “I
enjoy doing all of these different kinds of
jobs as it keeps you on your toes.” Steele
has a long stint on Wild At Heart ahead.
“I’m saving animals in South Africa until
December, so I’ve no plans for 2010....
yet,” she says.” But with a succession
of varied roles under her belt, Steele
feels that she’s put her role as Lexie in
Monarch of the Glen well behind her.
“Yes, people do still shout out at Lexie
in the street, but I don’t mind that; I did
do that show for a while!” says Steele. “I
think I have done a lot of different work
since leaving Monarch of the Glen over
five years ago, but I will always have a
soft spot for Lexie!”
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Zig Zag Love
Mary Morris
The first drama commission from
BBC Scotland and Scottish Screen’s
partnership to produce independent
films for BBC One was Zig Zag Love, a
no-holds-barred look at an adolescent
love affair. Writer Mary Morris created
a tender story about Ziggy (Cara
Readle) and Peter (Anthony Martin)
for the 60-minute production which
was directed by Gillies MacKinnon for
Machine Productions, and broadcast in
spring 2009 on BBC Scotland.
“I was born and raised in the Highlands
and one of the most powerful
memories I have was about being
young and desperately wanting to
dance and fall in love and ride on the
back of boys’ motorbikes with total
disregard for the Scottish weather and
terrain!” recalls Mary. “When I heard
BBC Scotland and Scottish Screen were
looking for one-off dramas, I grabbed
at the chance to pitch an idea using that
memory.”
While working as a writer on CBBC’s
The Story of Tracy Beaker, Mary
met Cara Readle, a young actor with
cerebral palsy, and was very impressed
by her. They met again a couple of
years later by which time Cara was a
teenager. “I found I couldn’t keep my
eyes off her beautiful face - I just knew
the camera would love her and I knew
she was talented and I swore there and
then I would one day write for her,”
says Mary. “It was only a small jump to
realising she should be the star of Zig
Zag Love.”
It was important to Morris that this
show shouldn’t be about disability
but be about love and sex. Teenage
sex is often treated as a taboo or a
problem in our society and rarely is
it looked upon as just another part
of growing up. And Morris contends,
“Most people do have sex in their early
to mid teens- and always have done,
so I wanted to tell the truth about that
and wanted to present it as something
positive and natural. However, drama
rightly demands that character journeys
should never be easy, so I matched the
character of Ziggy with someone who
had almost overwhelming difficulties
but who also had an overwhelming
desire to get himself laid before it’s too
late.” So Morris gave her Peter, a boy
with testicular cancer, weighed down
with the grief of losing his best friend,
Elliot, to leukemia. Peter and Elliot had
made a pact to get themselves f****d
as soon as possible. Now it was left up
to Peter...
“Then,” adds Morris, “I threw in a
couple of problematic fathers - one
over-protective and terrified that his
daughter might have sex and one
under-protective one, cheering his son
on - to complicate things further. When
the producers sent me a CD of Anthony
and Kevin’s audition as Peter and Elliot,
I knew we had our dream teenage cast.
Discovering that Robert Carlyle and
Mark Lewis Jones were keen to play the
fathers and Joe McFadden would play
a young doctor was a real gift.” Adding
a comical-but-wise performance as
the ‘willing lassie’ Peter’s father offers
as a solution to Peter’s needs was the
brilliant Debbie Welsh.
The producer and Morris met with
Cara and her mother to ensure that
Cara had no concerns regarding the
content of the piece and were delighted
to receive nothing but enthusiasm and
dedication from this most professional
actor. Morris claims she did very little
research, only checking a few facts
about testicular cancer and consulting
with Cara that she would be physically
able to do what the script demanded.
She needn’t have worried. Even though
the Scottish weather and the terrain
tried its best to daunt the shoot by
flooding the location and upending
her bum-first into a small torrent of
freezing water, Cara was always full of
energy and commitment.
Morris could be considered a late
starter as she only began writing in
her 40s but has since written a great
deal for children and adults, both in
television and theatre and has received
many awards and nominations for her
work.
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made in scotlanD TV
Peter McDougall
Peter McDougall has more than a few points
to make, about his craft, his celebrated
collaborations with John McKenzie, his peers,
the demise of television drama, and more.
Yet despite his reputation as one of Scotland’s
greatest writers, McDougall hasn’t had a piece of
work produced for television in over 15 years; his
passion for writing, however, is clearly undimmed, as
anyone who saw his recent plays at Glasgow’s Oran
Mor venue will attest (and he has two screenplays in
the pipeline). He’s not short of explanations for his
apparent silence on the small screen.
“I’ve fought with everyone. I have, I’ll admit it, I’m
relentless about what I do. I work on the assumption
that if I’m asked to write something, I’ll be allowed
to write the piece I want to write. It’s a system that’s
worked well for me in the past, and resulted in
some not bad dramas.” The Prix Italia jury obviously
agreed, McDougall being one of the few British
dramatists ever to be honoured with this award. “I
want to have final control of my writing, but that
kind of control scares today’s producers. If you’re
working with people you trust, who understand the
creative process, it shouldn’t be an issue. These days
you get an avalanche of script editors talking daft
jargon about ‘narrative arcs’ and ‘reversals’, who
know virtually nothing about the craft of writing.
They want everything spelt out and simplified. Bland
and predictable. They work on the assumption that
the audience is stupid. So it’s not that I don’t want
to write for television, I don’t get asked anymore.”
Sentiments that chime with a recently widely
circulated article by veteran producer Tony Garnett on
the state of TV drama.
There’s no shortage of recent recognition for
McDougall’s work. A boxed set of his work for the
BBC’s Play for Today strand, Just Another Saturday,
Just A Boy’s Game, The Elephant’s Graveyard and
Down Among The Big Boys, was recently pressed.
And together with director John McKenzie, a
retrospective of his work took place at the 2009
Edinburgh International Film Festival, including
McDougall’s highly influential powerhouse of a film
about Jimmy Boyle, A Sense of Freedom.
“That was an stv production. I think they had their
licence coming up and wanted a drama done. At
first I wasn’t sure about doing it, because there was
the issue of glamorising violence; I was very aware
of that. Jeremy Isaacs spoke to me about doing
something on Jimmy Boyle and then came back and
said, ‘OK Peter, John McKenzie will direct it if you
write it.’ That’s how these things should be done - no
committee meetings, no outlines, no nothing,” says
McDougall. “Watching it again in Edinburgh this year,
there’s the odd line I’d like to change, but not much.
McKenzie did some good work on it. You don’t get to
see pieces like that anymore; it’s not just a question
of the subject, it’s about the vibrancy of the piece - the
system doesn’t allow for it now.”
While he applauds McKenzie’s work, McDougall is
also wary of the auteur theory, and fiercely protective
of the authorship of his work; his plays begin and
end with his own, solo credit, and that’s not by
accident. “I’ve never been interested in directing;
a director interprets and that’s his job. And John
McKenzie is one of the best. But it’s not like John
came to me and said, ‘Let’s do something on the
Orange Walks.’ I was brought up in that world. I knew
it intimately; I swung a stick in Belfast. Before Just
Another Saturday, I wrote Just Your Luck, which was
about a Catholic/Protestant wedding based on my
own family (interestingly directed by Mike Newall of
Four Weddings fame). Every word of Just Another
Saturday was on the page long before a director
clapped eyes on it.”
McDougall could never be accused of ‘phoning it in’.
The language of his scripts is powerful, visceral and
real, and his description of his on-set experiences
would whiten the hair of any health and safety
inspector.
“On one film, McKenzie came over to me and said he
could no longer work with actor Ken Hutchison, so
could I tell him he was fired. This was after Ken had
made Straw Dogs for Sam Peckinpah and he’d just
done a film called Wrath of God with Robert Mitchum
and Victor Bueno. This was no easy thing to ask me
to do, so I asked John why and he said because Ken’s
wearing a suit with cowboy boots and he refuses
to take them off. I went to Ken and told him and it
didn’t go down well. The boots were staying. ‘They
stay, you go’. Ken gets angry and eventually he starts
saying, ‘Go on, hit me, hit me, you want to punch me,
don’t you’. By this time I did, but I’m thinking if I hit
him in the face it could hold up the shoot. So I go up
close to him and give him a big kiss. We ended up
falling into a single bed and sleeping together. We
were emotionally exhausted,” says McDougall. “Ken
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made in scotlanD TV
“ I work on the
assumption that
if I’m asked to
write something,
I’ll be allowed to
write the piece I
want to write” -
Peter McDougall
whispers in my ear, ‘John uses you
to do his dirty work’, but to me it was
about getting the best from your cast.
Minus cowboy boots!”
McDougall offers a tantalising glimpse
into a recent project which he’s been
writing but which he fears has fallen
into development hell due to his
uncompromising approach.
“It’s a drama about a doctor and his
wife. I’d become aware of supposed
cancer drugs coming into the country
illegally that were actually little more
than placebos. The doctor realises
what’s going on and wants to blow the
whistle on the whole operation. The
fallout from this puts great strain on the
doctor’s marriage. That was at the heart
of the drama. The people I was dealing
with seemed to want to turn this into
a thriller about the Russian mafia. But
then by the next day it’d be, ‘No, we see
it more as a piece about contemporary
Glasgow, could it have more comedy
d’you think?’ Or, ‘we no longer have
two-hour slots so could you cut it in half
and add some ethnic minorities?’ ‘Once
we’ve had our pre-meeting meeting
about meetings we’ll get back to you.’
And they wonder why the quality of
drama has deteriorated.”
Despite such trials, McDougall doesn’t
seem bitter about his work; if anything,
he seems to be delighted that audiences
are still interested. “I’m amazed I
managed to write what I did,” he admits.
“I’m not frustrated, I just don’t want
to sit hand-polishing an outline for
months, that’s not the way I write.” You
sense that McDougall has lost none of
his self-belief, and that it’s only a matter
of time before some gifted producer
manages to harness the restless energy
that made McDougall one of the greats
of TV drama. He’s not only a great writer,
but also a skilled raconteur, whose tales
of the madness of filming would make
good dramas in themselves.
thanks to EIFF for photo
“Harvey Keitel came over to Dunoon
before we started shooting Down Where
the Buffalo Go. He wanted to get a
feel for the place, the people, the Holy
Loch. We’d got our arrangements mixed
up, so Harvey phones my mother in
Greenock, and says ‘Mrs McDougall,
could I speak with your son, Peter?’ and
my maw says, ‘He’s not here’. Then they
got talking and Harvey says, ‘You know
ma’am, your son is a wonderful writer.’
And she says, ‘Aw son, you don’t
believe anything he tells you, do you?”
Harvey called Peter a Scottish Scorsese
and has said he would work on anything
Peter wrote. So could that be the key
to the next McDougall TV drama? “For
HBO, no problem. Here? We’d never get
past the ‘narrative arc.’”
9

made in scotlanD TV
Neville Kidd on
A history of
Scotland
he award-winning BBC Scotland
programme, A history of
Scotland, presented by Neil
Oliver, returns to our television
screens in early November 2009.
Co-produced with the Open
University, it’s the flagship television series
of the broadcaster’s Scotland’s History
project and in Scotland a third of the
audience - 1.6million - tuned in across the
first five parts.
With the second five parts
promising 300 years of dramatic
storylines, getting the right look and
feel to the programmes is a vital part of
the remit, and experienced cameraman
Neville Kidd was delighted to step up
to the plate again.
“It was an ideal situation in that I
was brought on-board early, so was
involved in the planning of what kind
of look we’d be going for. I work as
a cameraman for both documentary
and drama, so I hope to be able to
provide the best of both worlds. I used
prime lenses which is what we use in
drama where you change lenses for
each individual scene. Richard Downes
(Series Producer) wanted to make sure
that different historical periods had
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“It’s a remarkable story, so we
have gone to great lengths to
make sure the programmes
reflect that visually.”
- Neville Kidd
made in scotlanD TV
Neville Kidd at the Television Craft BAFTAs
Copyright BAFTA/Richard Kendal
different looks, so I used all kinds of
lenses, as I would on a drama.”
The latest five-part series, taking
the story on from the mid 1600s to
the modern day, resumes on BBC
One Scotland in the autumn, with
transmission at a later point on network
BBC Two. Ground covered includes the
battle of Culloden, the Enlightenment,
and our role in forging the British
Empire as Scotland rose to become a
major industrial player on a worldwide
scale. As director of photography, the
challenges involved in such a wideranging
project were non-stop.
“We went to Jamaica to look at the
migration of Jacobites there after
Culloden, as part of the programme
that deals with the slave trade. I worked
closely on the script with the director
and producer to get the right visual
style for each segment,” says Kidd.
“We want people to be sucked into
the visuals, so it wouldn’t be jarring to
mix location work with studio scenes;
we want to keep the audience in the
world of the film we evoke. Using the
prime lenses helped us to keep certain
things out of focus when filming on
21st century locations, helping us to
avoid things which were too modern and might wrench the audience out of the
programme.
“Having gone right back to the Romans and Picts, part of the attraction of A history
of Scotland is finding out more about what actually happened; there were many
Scots, for example, who went on to start a new life in America. Over a third of
those who signed the Declaration of independence were Scots or have Scots
descent,” says Kidd. “It’s a remarkable story, so we have gone to great lengths
to make sure the programmes reflect that visually. We tried to film as much as
possible during the golden hour, in the early morning or evening, making sure
that the visuals were inspiring rather than grey or drab; the primes really give it a
trademark look.”
Having also worked on the drama series Rome, and the Japanese history of
Shogun, Kidd has made a career out of evoking different senses of time and place.
It was a career which was nearly ended prematurely on A history of Scotland by
an exotic creature which attempted to make its way into showbusiness up Kidd’s
trouser-leg.
“When we were filming in Jamaica, I woke up on the day I was meant to be flying
home with a two-inch black spot on my ankle. The veins started to turn black, like
something from a horror movie, and I started to get nauseous, watching another
inch of my leg turn black every ten minutes,” he says. “I didn’t know it, but I’d been
bitten by a deadly caterpillar, and the venom was spreading up my leg. Fortunately
I got to a doctor, and he was able to give me an antidote injection. It was pretty
lucky that I had clocked the bite; if I had got on that flight without spotting it, I
would have been in dead trouble.”
As it was Neville was able to get the antidote, make his flight and two days later
was in London collecting a BAFTA for his work on A history of Scotland, trumping
Ross Kemp in Afghanistan, Amazon with Bruce Parry, and The Victorian Sex
Explorer which had Rupert Everett in Africa.
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made in scotlanD TV
Lonely Sprout and
Stuart Tomato,
The OOglies
Nick Hopkin on
One critic noted, of the nation’s
most beloved pooch, Gromit,
that despite having no
mouth, his eyes alone made
him “the most expressive silent
star since Buster Keaton”. For animators
around the world, there’s nothing
like a pair of googly eyes to grab the
attention. And anyone entranced by
creatures with larger-than-life ocular
capacity is likely to be engaged by The
OOglies, a major new project from BBC
Scotland’s Children’s Department, and
the brain-child of BBC Scotland’s Nick
Hopkin, voice-over artist Tim Dann and
writer Austin Low.
“Basically in 2008 the CBBC
Development Department, which I was
heading up at the time, got together a
list of projects to pitch, and one of them
was OOglies, a comedy sketch-show for
kids. We wanted to make a show which
was funny without being patronising,
while using all the production values
and expertise we could muster,”
says Hopkin. “The pitch for OOglies
demanded that we have the speed of
delivery and visual appeal for younger
kids, without alienating grown-ups. It’s
very much in the Wylie Coyote genre of
build-ups and calamity falls.”
With over 65 individual characters
and over five and a half hours of
programming to fill, and the series
playing as two blocks of 13 x15 minute
episodes, creating OOglies was a huge
undertaking. “OOglies are basically
household objects who come alive;
their world is one that only comes to
life when our backs are turned. We’ve
created 750 stand-alone sketches in our
studio in Maryhill, Glasgow. We took
over an empty warehouse to set up
twelve animation pods, with a range
of top animators coming from places
like Aardman, HOT Animation, Ko
Lik and Cosgrove Hall,” says Hopkin.
“Each animator was aiming to create
up to 25 seconds of animation a day,
about double what would usually be
attempted. The animation could be
done quicker than usual because they
have no mouths, so it’s really just the
limbs and eyes that have to be moved.
We created a massive 29 different eye
expressions for the characters which
enabled them to show their emotions
at any one time, clearly to the audience
- sometimes happiness, sometimes
shock, sometimes even love! There
were probably about 40 or so different
household environments which were
created by our impressive design
team and then the sketches were
shot entirely as a series of still photos
and imported into our animation
computers. For the first time ever in
the UK, at such a scale, the animators
used a brand new animation software
created in the US.”
Animated characters have a universal
appeal, but creating The OOglies meant
attention to the detail of each character,
from the drawing board onwards.
“Lonely Sprout is one of our Ooglies
stars; he’s always trying to make
friends, but everyone seems to be
trying to avoid him. We had to audition
a number of supermarket sprouts to
find just the right one to model him on;
the folds in his leaves give him exactly
the right kind of droopy face. Then
there’s Stunt Tomato, a kind of Evel
Knievel/Nacho Libre type of character,
who is always trying to impress the
vine tomatoes with his stunts. There
are meatballs that want to be Olympic
12

Nick Hopkin, Producer made and Austin in Low, scotlanD Writer The OOgliesTV
“We wanted to
make a show which
was funny without
being patronising,
while using all the
production values
and expertise we
could muster.”
- Nick Hopkin
athletes but usually end up becoming
pasta sauce, and Mr Magnetic, who
wears a medallion, which seems to
attract all metal objects. Or Whistling
Walnut, who plays a dried banana
guitar and sings a little song, just
before an anvil gets dropped on his
head!” says Hopkin. “We worked on
a low budget and a tight schedule
to make OOglies work, with over a
quarter of a million individual frames
to render!
Conkers, The OOglies
Doughnuts, The OOglies
Many were complicated in that when
a character flies through the air, they
have metal rigs to hold them in place,
which then have to be painted out in
post-production. The new technology
we have makes things possible, but at
the same time, it’s painstaking work.”
Another facet of OOglies is the
soundtrack which features no actual
dialogue, recalling the whistlelanguage
of the beloved children’s
series The Clangers. The entire OOglies
soundtrack is composed of various
squeaks, vocal exclamations and
groans that the creatures make as they
slip, slide and splat across the screen.
“We agreed early on they would have no language, which is good because
it widens the opportunities for international sales,” says Hopkin. The series is
broadcast on CBBC every weekday at 5.45pm (repeated 9.15am).
13

made in scotlanD TV
“I thought it would
never fly, but the execs
snapped it up, I think they
immediately saw there
was a gap in the market.”
- Bryan Elsley
under the skin of
Bryan
Elsley
Bryan Elsley
It’s big over here, now it’s heading
over there. Skins is heading
Stateside, as creator Bryan Elsley
prepares to head off to the US to
work on the American edition of the
popular E4 and Channel 4 show. Elsley
worked his way up through theatre,
followed by stints on Casualty and
Hamish Macbeth to his celebrated
adaptation of Iain Banks’s The Crow
Road. But Skins is his biggest hit to
date, albeit one with humble origins.
“I’d taken all my brilliant, original ideas
for the series and was pitching them
to my teenage son. Unfortunately, he
thought they were all terrible, boring:
‘a middle-aged load of crap,’ I think
were his exact words. He said I should
make something clever about teens,
and I should do it with him. I thought it
would never fly, but the execs snapped
it up, I think they immediately saw there
was a gap in the market,” says Elsley.
“I’d initially wanted something that was
about teenagers’ lives and loves, and
sex and drugs, so it wasn’t until much
later that the series got more serious;
that’s something of a sub text which has
grown as the programme has become
more developed.”
“What was remarkable about Skins was
the way it grew; it changed as a number
of young people came to work on the
show, all arrogant and lippy, writing and
formulating ideas, they’re what makes
the programme what it is now. Skins
is funny and serious at the same time,
sometimes even stupid and ridiculous,
but also in deadly earnest. We’d have
all of our young people together,
planning the series in one big room;
there’s nothing magic about that kind
of process, we’d just have to hash the
ideas backwards and forwards until we
got it right.”
“Now I’m heading over to the US
to get involved with their version. I
produced Skins myself because we
don’t expect teenagers to behave like
professional filmmakers, so there’s a
bit of unconventional management
required on my part to get the show
out. It’s not my own story; I’m 48, and I
think of the programme as being about
the teenage life I didn’t have. In a way,
it makes up for my own dull teenage
years; growing up in Dalkeith in 1975, I
didn’t get to do the things we show on
Skins myself. We’re showing how much
better teenage life is now.”
The route to Skins was a long and
sometimes painful one for Elsley, who
14

Skins
admits to having spent some time
in the wilderness (“We’re not talking
about years, but decades,” he says).
Elsley honed his craft working on other
people’s series, a process he feels could
teach any aspiring writer a few tricks.
“I’d say that TV screenwriting is the only
exact form of play writing, working to a
programme length of 45 minutes and 30
seconds. Anyone who wants to be a TV
screenwriter has to learn how that kind
of writing works, to control the story
and make things function,” he says.
“I’d started out by working for all the
major Scottish theatre companies
like Wildcat, The Traverse, Borderline,
The Lyceum, and it saddens me that
theatre writers don’t often get the
kind of opportunities I did. People like
Bill Bryden and Peter Broughan were
running BBC Scotland’s drama output at
the time, and they showed a lot of faith
in me as a writer. To me, there’s a big
question mark about why the depth of
talent we have now in theatre doesn’t
get the chance to translate to television
and film. I originally went to the BBC
with half an idea written on the back of
an envelope, and people don’t get the
chance to work like that anymore.”
The television landmark drama The
Crow Road made Elsley a respected
television writer, an experience he looks
back on fondly as he prepares to work
on the US Skins revamp.
“That was a dream job for me; The
Crow Road was probably my favourite
novel at the time, and when my
agent offered it to me, I jumped at
the chance. It’s structurally perfect for
dramatisation, and although I made a
big deal at the time about how difficult
it was to write, the strength of the
novel made it easy, and Iain Banks was
very supportive,” says Elsley. “I’ve just
finished another project, a film script set
in Brazil in the 1920’s. It’s the only thing
I’ve written in the last three years other
than Skins, but I’m not too worried
about being typecast; it’s taken a long
time for me to get a successful show,
so I’m always going to be happy to be
associated with it.”
15

made in scotlanD TV
Gregory Burke on
One
Night in
Emergency
A
one-off drama for BBC Scotland
and Silver River Productions, One
Night in Emergency marks the
small-screen debut of one of Scotland’s
most acclaimed writers, Gregory
Burke. Burke’s Black Watch won him
an Olivier award and made him the
toast of theatres worldwide through this
National Theatre of Scotland production.
Starring Kevin McKidd and Michelle
Ryan, Burke’s TV debut is a star-studded
piece featuring Ewen Bremner, Jamie
Sives, David Hayman, James Cosmo,
Gary Lewis and Tam Dean Burn.
But while the story of One Night in
Emergency takes inspiration from
Homer’s The Odyssey, the germ of the
idea came from Burke’s own unhappy
experience of a London hospital.
“My partner was taken into hospital. I
went to meet her and found she hadn’t
yet received any treatment. It was a
chaotic scene, as A & E departments
often are on a Saturday night, and
I, perhaps unwisely, expressed my
frustration to the hard pressed staff
about the delay,” says Burke. “As
we waited, there was this feeling of
helplessness that occurs when a loved
one is suffering and you can do nothing
to help. It’s something I’ve never
forgotten but I didn’t immediately see
how it could be dramatised.”
Encouraged by Dan Hine of Silver River,
and by watching the Romanian film
The Death of Mr Lazarescu, Burke set
about creating One Night in Emergency,
although he’s quick to point out that
it’s in no way a criticism of the NHS: “I
didn’t want to do that at all. It’s about
a man who is lost, and can’t get to the
person he loves, and I thought of it
like The Odyssey, which
is one man’s quest to get
home before calamity
befalls him, so I used the
myth of Odysseus to hang
the structure on,” says
Burke. “But it’s definitely
not an adaptation, more
of a pillaging, really. Peter
(Kevin McKidd) comes
up against a number
of obstacles, including
his nemesis, a one-eyed
security guard (Yigal Naor), who
represents the Cyclops in many ways. I
wanted the character of Peter to be a
young, urban professional, who has
rejected religion, who doesn’t rely on
others, who thinks his life is all his own
creation, and that everything would
disappear in a puff of smoke without
him. What he discovers is that he’s
not immune, and what breaks down
his arrogance is his experience of a
casualty ward.”
Crossing over from theatre to television
has proved a substantial obstacle for
many writers, but Burke feels that the
support he got from Silver River made
this easier to achieve, despite the high
expectations that work like Gargarin
Way, Black Watch and his recent play
Hoors has created.
“Michael Offer came on board to direct,
and asked me about the elements of
mythology and how important they
were; he was keen to make sure that
the transition to reality from this
mythic, otherworldly place would work
smoothly. He’s got a lot of experience,
and was able to help tweak the hospitalgenre
rules to create something new.”
“I do have more ambitions to
write for television.”
- Gregory Burke
It might surprise many to know that
Burke never set out to be a theatre
writer, but feels that he happened into
it by happy accident. When One Night
in Emergency goes out, he’s hoping that
it’ll help pave the way for other nontheatre
work.
“I never set out to be a theatre writer,
because to be honest, most of my
influences were people like Alan Clarke,
Alan Bleasdale and people who wrote
for Play for Today. If it hadn’t been for
the success of Gagarin Way, I’m not
sure I’d have continued writing plays. I
feel totally comfortable watching rushes
on-set or watching the first rough-cut. I
have a tiny role in the piece and I found
that being on set helped me understand
a lot more about how a television
programme is made. So yes, I do have
more ambitions to write for television,
I’ve done well from theatre, but I’m
open to offers as to where I go next.”
16

made in scotlanD TV
Simon
Donald
Just coming off the back of writing
for the highly successful Wallander
detective series with Kenneth
Branagh, writer Simon Donald is carving
a niche for himself in both television
and film. Arguably his breakthrough
came with Low Winter Sun, the Channel
4 drama that teamed him with director
Adrian Shergold. Although the central
character was a policeman, Frank
Agnew, played by Mark Strong, Donald
doesn’t see Low Winter Sun as an
ordinary detective story.
“Low Winter Sun wasn’t really about
the law - the starting point was two men
arguing about the morality of killing
lobsters while standing over a bathful
of them. Then it became what are they
really talking about? Then who are they?
Then who are they really talking about
killing?” says Donald. “This evolved
into a story about a man who murders
to avenge his love. Then discovers he’s
been lied to and she’s not dead - and has
to investigate the murder he committed
in order to try and find his love. Agnew
being a policeman was necessary, but
secondary.”
Working with Adrian Shergold, who
directed Timothy Spall in the awardwinning
hangman drama Pierrepoint,
was also a positive experience for
Donald, who appreciates that good
directors aren’t always easy to find, and
he was keen to reacquaint himself with
someone with whom he’d worked with
on-stage.
“I worked very closely with Adrian - I’d
worked with him previously when I was
an actor. He loved the moral complexity
of the script so he was very faithful to its
every twist and turn. And it was through
the research I did on the project that
found me the ‘bad meat scam’ which is
the crime that underpins all the venality
in the story.”
Low Winter Sun took five years to reach
the screen, including a period during
which the project was cancelled. The
transition from Donald’s stage work to
working in film and television wasn’t
always a happy one; the film version of
his play The Life of Stuff didn’t turn out
as he’d hoped, and television gave him
the opportunity to reverse the setback.
“I never felt that I was making a
transition - stage and screen formats
are so fundamentally different that
you approach them each afresh. To see
what happens if you don’t - compare
the stage version of The Life of Stuff
with the screen version,” says Donald.
“On stage, it was glorious - the screen
version is a hellish version of the stage
version. The stage version racked up
awards - the screen version was heaped
with opprobrium.”
Donald can look back on a long learning
curve as a television writer, one that
is now blooming in terms of new
opportunities and projects.
“Doing Doctor Finlay for stv was my first
TV work and it was extremely satisfying
- everybody has an affinity with Finlay,
Janet and Cameron - I used to watch
the Bill Simpson, Andrew Cruickshank,
Barbara Mullen series with my granny.
And with Murphy’s Law - the brief
was to re-invent the character which
was satisfying but hard,” says Donald.
“We’ve just had the green-light from the
BBC for The Deep - a five hour primetime
thriller set under the Arctic ice-cap.
That’ll take me the rest of this year to
write. There’s a Film 4 horror screenplay,
which is almost done and ready to go off
and find its finance. Then there’s another
big BBC project in the queue behind The
Deep - so everything’s sort of accounted
for at the moment.”
17

made in scotlanD TV
Paul Murray @ STV
The new head of entertainment and factual
programming at stv is Paul Murray, who
comes to Alan Clements’ content team with
a remit to develop and deliver a range of
innovative projects for both STV and other
broadcasters . As an ex-director of Endemol
Scotland, and with a notable track record at
Wark Clements, Murray is well equipped for
the task.
“I’ve been in TV for 15 years
now, working on network cookery,
property and celebrity series as
well as history and science docs, so I’d
hope to have retained some useful
stuff along the way,” he says. “I’m still
really excited about television and I
think that’s half the battle. It’s a privilege
to be able to work on such a diverse
range of shows and each one always
has something about it that’s fun and
unique.”
“The business here is totally
dedicated to content revival. The
senior management team were clear
about the fact that content would help
drive the future fortunes of stv, so no
pressure there then!” he says. “What
we do in the content team is twofold:
first we look for shows that will
appeal to our Scottish audience and at
the same time we develop and make
programmes for other broadcasters and
other platforms. The aim in both cases
is to make original programmes that
audiences love.”
Looking back at recent STV output,
Murray highlights a number of
specific shows that he feels reflect the
broadcaster’s commitment to quality,
while also reaching the large audience
that keeps advertisers happy.
“In terms of what we make and
broadcast at STV, I’m particularly happy
with some of our quick turnaround pop
docs like Susan Boyle - Two Weeks
That Shook Showbusiness. That was
a programme which really captured
a moment in time, and the audience
came to it in very large numbers,” he
says. “In factual, we’re very proud
of our new blue chip series Made in
Scotland and have high hopes for a
two-part series on Scots who fought in
the Spanish Civil War, The Scots Who
Fought Franco. We’re also making
our first ever series for BBC daytime,
which everyone’s excited about and if
that goes well it could be entertaining
audiences, and employing staff in
Scotland for quite a while. And for high
adrenalin escapism there’s always the
new Jack Osborne series coming to
ITV2.”
As well as a worldwide recession
there’s a changing media landscape
driven by digital technology and Murray
acknowledges that these aren’t the
easiest of times, but given the skills that
he and his colleagues bring to the table,
he isn’t worried about what the future
might bring.
“It may not be very original of me to
say so, but in these times we’re fighting
on two fronts. There is no doubt that
the recession has hit commercial
broadcasters hard; there is quite
simply less money around so less
shows are being commissioned and
every decision is now under intense
scrutiny. It’s also true that as a format,
television itself is now competing with
a whole host of other entertainment
platforms, but it doesn’t make me
Nostradamus for pointing that out!”
says Murray.
”TV will remain relevant to audiences
as long as it remains original, exciting
and entertaining, and as content
providers, we have to be able to adapt
to the changing environment; that’s
nothing new, in fact, it’s always been
the case,” he says. “Talkies superseded
silent movies, TV offered an alternative
to the cinema, and so on. We just have
18

made in scotlanD TV
”TV will remain
relevant to
audiences as
long as it remains
original, exciting
and entertaining.”
- Paul Murray
Lorraine Kelly, Made in Scotland
to keep on our toes, embrace change, come up with good ideas and
make them well. We’re now producing content across all platforms,
and our growing online presence is evidence of that.”
Change is one of the inevitable factors in any broadcaster’s life, and
Murray identifies such factors as the digital switchover, the changing
face of Channel 4, the volatile advertising market, changing viewing
patterns, and competition with hand held devices all having an impact
on stv’s future thinking.
Ronnie Corbert, Made in Scotland
“The company has had to make some tough decisions in recent years
to be ‘fit for purpose’, and it’s now up to the content team to keep a
clear head and focus on what we need to deliver to our audience.
We constantly need to look at what we’re producing to make sure
it’s relevant to Scotland and UK broadcasting in general. As far as
specific changes in the market are concerned, I could list ten and all
or none of might come to fruition,” says Murray. “A few years ago
the general consensus was that Saturday nights were dead and that
only squares sat around to watch telly together any more - well tell
that to the makers of Britain’s Got Talent, Dr Who and Harry Hill’s TV
Burp! That’s what’s so great about TV.”
Jack Osbourne
Jack Osbourne
19

made in scotlanD TV
developments ensuring there’s more choice around
than ever before. Tyler’s responsibility is to make
sure the BBC moves with the times and rises to the
challenge of making the right kind of programming for
the digital age.
When Alan Tyler took to the stage as part of a double
act with Harry Enfield at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1987,
little did he realise he was embarking on a career in
the entertainment world that would see him make just
as sizeable a contribution as his illustrious co-star. Two
decades later, Tyler has gone from Head of Comedy
and Entertainment at BBC Scotland to Executive Editor
of Entertainment Commissioning, responsible for
developing a strategic overview of the independent
sector for Entertainment in Scotland and Northern
Ireland, forging and managing relationships with
independent production companies in the two nations.
“The programmes I’m responsible for are a real mix;
I’m very proud of No Holds Bard, a 60 minute comedy
drama we produced for Burns Night in Scotland, which
now looks like it’s also going to play nationally as
well. I’m also happy to see How Not to Live Your Life
going on to a second series, as well as the continuing
success of Comedy Connections. We’re also bringing
back Hole in the Wall, and there’s a new entity, in
the Saturday night Lottery shows tradition called
Guestimation. So there’s comedy, drama and factual,
all making up a diverse package of entertainment.”
“I think there’s a fresh realisation, not just at the
BBC but in Scottish indies, that the key to long term
production is returning brands. Something like
the Saturday night Lottery slot is a rock in terms
of building up a regular returning show. I think
companies have learned that it’s not a question of
living hand-to-mouth and then asking ‘Can I get a
commission?,’ but coming up with ideas that could
sustain several series,” he says. “ In terms of creating
comedy shows, it’s all about good writing; we wouldn’t
have been able to bring back talents like Ashley
Jensen to work on No Holds Bard, or Bill Paterson and
Dennis Lawson, unless the writing was good enough.
With The Old Guys, that programme was written to
feature well loved faces like Roger Lloyd Pack and
Jane Asher. We’re constantly searching for the best
package of entertainment, making sure that we’ve
got programming that audiences want to spend their
Saturday night with.”
How people spend their evenings is a changing state
of affairs, with games consoles, the internet and other
“There’s a recent statistic that says that one in four
families in the UK have a Wii, so we’re looking at how
that rise in casual gaming affects the kind of product
they watch. We know from our work on events like T
in the Park that there’s a huge interest in ‘red button’
content, but we have to make sure when people press
that red button, they see the kind of content they
want to see, it mustn’t just repeat the experience of
the initial transmission.” says Tyler. “ If you look at the
most successful viral videos, most of them are based
around humour, they’re inherently funny; just because
we’re talking about a different kind of platform doesn’t
mean that entertainment isn’t the key thing. The trick
is to be authoring the right kind of material at the right
time, and being able to accurately tailor it to the needs
to the audience.”
“We’re not limited to red button content; the BBC is
particularly successful as an online broadcaster, with
a crucial role to play in people’s lives in terms of news
and current affairs. So we need to go to where story
is evolving and give people a reason to come to our
website rather than anyone else’s because of what
we provide on each individual story. And anyone who
uses You Tube will know that in terms of repeated
viewings, comedy is king; whether you’re a Monty
Python fan, or of the Horne and Corden generation,
comedy more than any other genre drives what people
view. We can learn from the way the internet suggests
other material a viewer might like; if someone likes
The League of Gentlemen, then there’s also plenty of
other programmes they might enjoy just as well.”
Seeing programmes like The Old Guys or The Life of
Riley re-commissioned is significant to Tyler in that
it indicates that the programmes the BBC makes are
finding an audience. That’s the main target of his role
as executive editor of entertainment commissioning,
and he’s looking forward to working with Scottish
indies to provide more.
“We’re hoping to work with stv, The Comedy Unit,
Green Ink, Wild Rover, Talkback, Endemol and RDF;
they are the kind of companies we’re seeking to build
for the future with. But it’s important that as well as
large established companies, we also go with small
one-man ventures; it’s the quality of the idea that we’re
most interested in,” says Tyler. “The best shows aren’t
created overnight, but can take two or three years from
the initial discussions. It’s time well spent, because
there’s no automatic recipe for success; when it comes
to entertaining, the rigorous development process is
the key to making a great idea into a great show.”
www.bbc.co.uk/scotland
20

Channel 4
As Channel 4’s Director of Nations and Regions, Stuart
Cosgrove is also involved in the creation of the
broadcaster’s 4iP Fund, a forward looking initiative to
create a future-proof strategy for activity outside London, as part
of the Next on 4 manifesto.
“4iP emerged from conversation between our CEO Andy Duncan
and me ; my role was to shape the idea, raise financial partnership
and take it to launch,” says Cosgrove. “That happened in 2009
when we launched with a fund value of £50m to be spent in
key regions in the UK in non-broadcast digital media. Like all
big ideas, it has been a mountain to climb, but Scotland is an
important part of the story.”
“4iP was underlined as a key component in the Digital Britain
report and will feature more importantly in the future. For me
it is a case of full-circle, as I originally went to Channel 4 from
the Scottish indie sector to manage the visionary Film and
Video Department, so you could say that 4iP is its post-web 2.0
equivalent,” he says. “This summer Channel 4’s remit will redrafted
and it’s no secret that many key public service genres
are expected to have an online dynamic. I’m glad that one of
Channel 4’s biggest arts projects ever, Central Station will be
based in Scotland, with ISO.”
While Channel 4’s role may be changing, Cosgrove is keen
to stress that the broadcaster’s role in providing financially
successful and culturally relevant programming remains the
same, and highlights two shows which he feels illustrates how
Channel 4’s programming can still create a sizable impact.
“I offer two very different examples, one for economic impact
the other for Scottish cultural value. Kirsty’s Home Made Home
has been a huge hit for Channel 4 in 2009, and will return in
the future. That’s a show which emerged out of the same IWC
Media stable which produces our property shows including
Location, Location, Location, now in its tenth series. Without
question, these shows have employed more people in Scotland
over ten years than any other shows and they are rarely given
the respect they deserve,” says Cosgrove. “The other stand
out for me, although much more modest in scale, was Clarity
Production’s The Estate - sixteen short films screened in prime
time, all set in and around the Sighthill area in Glasgow as it
faces demolition. It was a phenomenal portrait of multi-cultural
Scotland, produced by Sarah Tierney and beautifully filmed by
Ruth Carslaw.”
The holy grail for television creatives is, of course, the returning
drama or factual series and while Cosgrove admits that the
recession has stifled developments in this area, he does see
examples of how such programmes can work.
“We have not had any great progress with drama. English
regional cities have had more measurable success but even there
this is a thin year; drama is expensive and has borne some of the
brunt of the recession,” he says. “That still remains our trickiest
area, largely because it’s so competitive, but also because the
recession has taken £30m from the Channel 4 budget. But we do
have two pilots that are very promising, and one show recently
commissioned, Three Hungry Boys from KEO’s office in Govan,
has every chance of returning. It plays to the strengths of the
company and to Scotland, as is set among the food and foraging
landscape of the west coast.”
made in scotlanD TV
Recession always brings out accusations that major broadcasters
are using financial instability to retrench to their London base,
only commissioning regional programmes on a ‘tokenistic’ basis
but Cosgove suggests that such opinions are more to do with
anxious, ‘panic-button’ thinking than the realities of regional
programming.
“Since I’ve been at Channel 4, we have moved over £4.5 billion
worth of programming outside of London, and this year alone
our spend will be £115m. That is no illusory figure, but a fiscal
reality which pays the wages of literally hundreds of people in
Glasgow alone,” says Cosgrove.
“What you have to differentiate is two things: firstly, if people
have a pitch rejected, it’s an easy option to claim commissioning
out of London is ‘tokenistic.’ But more importantly, there is a
Scottish dimension to this; as a nation we are not always clear
whether the ambition for ‘out of London commissioning’ is
important for greater economic value to Scotland, or culturally
reflecting Scotland’s diversity. I’m more focussed on the first
although I can see the importance of the second. But the two
are not in absolute harmony; returning series with factual
formats intended for a pan-UK market will not necessarily
reflect Scotland, with Location Location Location being a prime
example.”
All forms of media, particularly those that depend on advertising
to survive, face a rocky road when money is tight, and the shifting
emphasis highlighting digital media has led to much discussion
about what the best financial models are. But Cosgrove isn’t one
to jump on the bandwagon that sees the internet as a quick-fix
solution to the problem.
“There is no question, in my mind that in the midst of recession
most advertising and marketing budgets are down, which affects
Channel 4. But unlike our competitors, Channel 4 is not losing
share or any ground in its key markets. The only advertising
sector that is actually up year-on-year is government spend, so
ironically swine flu has been good for business, as government
departments publish health warnings via TV,” he says. “It’s
hilarious watching the next generation of micro-blogging sites
trying to find a revenue model as they are air-kissed all the way
by the diger-ati, yet eventually they all come back to trying to
sell ads in some form or other. This year’s particular darling,
Twitter, is the latest no-income brand trying to navigate selling
ads without appearing to do so.”
“Social networks are unquestionably part of the new interactive
era, but like all previous media eras fads will rise and fade,” he
says. ”Twitter is clearly a fad and has all the euphoric processes
of a fad, but micro-blogging and real time communication are
not fads, they are part of a technological revolution from which
everyone will benefit creatively.”
www.channel4.com
21

made in scotlanD TV
MG ALBA
It’s 15 minutes into a Champions’
League qualifier, and while Celtic
and Dinamo Moscow are battling it
out on the pitch at Parkhead, interviews
are already taking place pitchside. The
name on the base of the microphone
is, perhaps surprisingly, MG ALBA,
formerly the Gaelic Media Service.
Funded directly by the Scottish
Government, MG ALBA works in
partnership with the BBC to deliver
BBC ALBA, making Gaelic language
programming with a unique, crossshared
media vision that reaches
hundreds of thousands of Scots, not all
of whom are Gaelic speakers.
“Sport is something which has worked
particularly well for us in the nine
months or so since BBC ALBA went
on the air,” says Chief Executive of
MG ALBA Donald Campbell. “Having
a broadcast exclusive on the Celtic
game is the kind of event which gives
us a summer impact in terms of
commanding a sizable audience, much
as the same way covering an Andy
Murray match at Wimbledon does for
the BBC. It’s pleasing to be covering a
big match like this, one in which many
people have an interest. We have had
good audiences for SPL games, as well
as rugby, shinty and other sports. Sport
at a national level is an ideal way for
us to get Gaelic broadcasting into the
consciousness of viewers.”
“We’re also very proud of the
work we’ve created in terms of our
documentary strands; in the past, most
documentaries have been in a half
hour format so that they can form part
of a regional opt-out. But the Gaelic
production sector has worked hard
with us to create a series of first class
documentaries for the weekday 9 to
10pm slot. These are stories which we
believe are of compelling interest to
Scottish audiences. Most of them are
fresh work but some are acquisitions
from the international markets. So
viewers tuning in to Soillse might
see a show about a Tibetian monk,
Zinedine Zidane, or a German-made
film about Polynesian bungee jumpers.
We have a contract with a production
company who help us make sure the
programmes we buy fit our remit,” says
Campbell.
“One film we commissioned was
about a lady in her 90’s who was born
on Eilean nan Ròn off Sutherland,
then settled near Norwich after the
island was evacuated in the 1930’s.
We took her back to where she came
from by helicopter and it made for
a tremendous film. She was a great
subject to cover, and she was delighted
when people recognised her in the
street afterwards.”
With regular weekly ratings of 200,000
to 222,000 and with a core staff base
of fewer than 30 employees, BBC
ALBA’s productions, helped by their
22

Cuide ri Cathy
Cuide ri Cathy
Còcaire nan Còcairean
partnership with production companies such as mneMedia
and Mac TV, have rapidly won a place in the hearts and
minds of many Scots. “I think we’ve done well from a
standing start, and because our funding is known in advance,
we have been able to make commitments that alleviate some
of the anxieties that individual production companies may
have during a recession. I think we provide a good variety of
entertainment, such as cookery show Còcaire nan Còcairean,
and we have a Top Gear-style show for petrol-heads, Air An
Rathad, as well as programmes for kids, as we’re able to revoice
cartoons into the Gaelic language.”
“Current affairs is another important strand of our
programming, and it’s important that what we do is as
inclusive as possible; after all, for every Gaelic speaker in
our audience, research shows there are three or four non-
Gaelic speakers watching because they’re interested in
the programmes. We’re always trying to stretch our core
audience; for Cuide ri Cathy, we’ve had Cathy MacDonald
doing interviews with well known Scots like Chick Young,
Jackie Stewart and Hardeep Singh Kohli looking into a day
in their life, and I think Cathy has been successful in getting
things from them that other interviewers haven’t managed.
We may be a Gaelic channel, but it’s not just for Gaelic
speakers.”
As he prepares for the September launch of the Autumn
schedule, Campbell is looking forward to consolidating
BBC ALBA’s initial impact, and pushing on with plans to
reach even more households with fresh and innovative
programming.
“BBC ALBA is a working proposition now. Before we started,
there was something of a credibility gap: many people
questioned whether the initial launch would be successful,
and we didn’t know whether people would think what we
were doing was any good. That’s not a concern now. The
task now is to ensure that our standards are maintained and
that cable and Freeview audiences in Scotland get access to
the channel as soon as possible.” says Campbell. “We got a
backhanded compliment from one of the Ofcom partners,
who said he was ‘pleasantly surprised’ by the quality of our
programmes. We aim to keep on surprising people!”
www.mgalba.com
“We may be a Gaelic channel, but it’s not just for Gaelic speakers.”
- Donald Campbell
Air An Rathad
23

RDF Scotlan
made in scotlanD TV
Rab C Nesbitt
Founded in 1993, RDF Media
Group bestrides the television
industry like the proverbial
colossus; through its Group members
RDF Television, RDF USA, IWC Media,
Touchpaper Television, Presentable,
The Foundation & The Comedy
Unit, the Group makes television
programmes for all the UK terrestrial
broadcasters, a number of secondary
UK channels as well as several US
network and cable broadcasters. It
also sells programmes and formats to
broadcasters worldwide and exploits
secondary rights such as DVDs and
merchandising through RDF Rights &
RDF Kids. The Group has an awardwinning
roster of returnable series
including Wife Swap and Location,
Location, Location. This summer RDF
Media Group created RDF Scotland, the
biggest independent producer north
of the border. RDF Scotland brings
together all of the RDF Media Group’s
production businesses in Scotland: IWC
Media, The Comedy Unit, Touchpaper
Scotland, RDF Entertainment Scotland
and The Foundation Scotland. Ensuring
that the Group continues its upward
path in Scotland is the responsibility of
RDF Scotland Group Director Hamish
Barbour and Chief Operating Officer
April Chamberlain.
“You can never predict what’s going
to work on television, that’s one of the
continually fascinating things about
it,” says Barbour. “When the idea
of Robson Green’s Extreme Fishing
came about, fishing had never really
broken through on terrestrial TV; but
with Robson on board, the audience
has been large and enthusiastic, and
it’s become a returning hit series. It
highlights that it’s not just about finding
the ‘celeb du jour’; it’s about tapping
into a celebrity’s passion for a subject,
whether it’s Stephen Hawkins, James
Dyson or Richard Dawkins, (all of whom
IWC is working with on The Genius of
Britain series for Channel 4), JK Rowling
or Robbie Coltrane.”
Another source of interest for Barbour
is the constant reinvention of the
programmes that RDF Scotland makes.
“Just when you think you’ve worked
out how to do it, a new commission
comes along with a whole new set of
parameters - and you’re back to being
a beginner again. If you compared
television to playing football, every
commission means a different size of
pitch, different teams, different goals,
and usually an entirely different crowd,
even though you’re roughly playing
the same game,” he says. Key to the
success of an idea is to work closely
with the commissioning editor, and
bring them into the creative process;
they have usually been programme
makers themselves, with the bonus of
real inside knowledge into their target
audience.”
24

Robson Green’s Extreme Fishing
made in scotlanD TV
Murderland
d
“There’s never been a better time to think big, and
to create surprises.“ - Hamish Barbour
With a long running series, there are
different demands. “With series like
Location, Location, Location, and
Relocation Relocation (IWC Media,
for Channel 4, now in their 12th and
6th series) we’re constantly looking at
ways to refresh the brand so they feel
exciting and new for the viewers. With
an ever-changing property market,
some of the creative thinking is done
for us - but nonetheless at the start of
each series the teams interrogate the
formats to give them a new lease of life.
It would be a big mistake to sit back,
relax and see them go out of date,” says
Barbour.
But IWC Media’s factual hits are just
part of the RDF Scotland roster. “We’re
in the cutting room with our new drama
serial Murderland, starring Robbie
Coltrane (Touchpaper Scotland, for
ITV1). The Comedy Unit is busy making
the new series of Rab C Nesbitt (BBC
Two), and The Foundation Scotland is
going to be filming another 50 episodes
of the CBeebies landmark series
Waybuloo (100 episodes were filmed in
Glasgow in 2008). “The plan is to keep
these companies as distinct brands
within the group, like a department
store, rather than expect one big
company to be all things to all genres.
The credibility of each individual brand
– from editors to executive producers -
is crucial to winning and delivering each
commission,’’ says Barbour.
On that note, IWC Media has recently
hired Adam MacDonald from ITV
daytime as Creative Director to develop
factual formats; MacDonald was
responsible for commissioning the
hit series Deal or no Deal, Come Dine
with Me and Dickinson’s Real Deal.
MacDonald’s first hire is Ian Lamarra,
who will head up the development
team in this exciting new area for
the company. “It’s all about making
formatted programmes that can work
on a worldwide scale. The RDF series
Wife Swap is a great example of a
British factual format that has gone on
to become a global hit. They’re very
tough to develop, but when you crack
them they can transform a company.”
Whilst some broadcasters are hoping
to sit out the recession with tried and
tested material, Barbour feels that RDF
Scotland’s future rests with a more
dynamic strategy. “There’s never been
a better time to think big, and to create
surprises. Despite these tough times,
there are always slots and budgets to
be found for really strong and exciting
ideas. The bar has definitely got higher
recently, but it would be impossible not
to want to rise to the challenge.”
www.iwcmedia.co.uk
www.comedyunit.co.uk
www.touchpapertv.com
www.foundationtv.co.uk
25

made in scotlanD TV
the comedy unit
Burnistoun
Limmy
Gary Tank Commander
Once part of BBC Scotland, The Comedy Unit has managed
to strike out as an independent production company,
furnishing Channel 4 and others with products that enshrine
the reputation of Scots for good humour. Head of Comedy
Rab Christie and Head of Development Gavin Smith work out
of their Bothwell Street office in Glasgow, overseeing a mix
of fresh new stars and household names, with their current
slate ranging from debutant stand-ups to institutions like Rab
C Nesbitt.
“The thing about our recent commissions, Burnistoun for
instance, is that the writers, Robert Florence and Ian Connell,
have practically done an apprenticeship in Scottish TV
comedy, working for ten years on programmes like Chewin’
The Fat, radio shows, sitcoms like Empty or Legit. The latest
Gary Tank Commander has come directly from the world of
stand-up and Limmy from the internet,” says Christie. “People
often talk about cross-collaborating over different channels of
disciplines, and some take it with a pinch of salt, but all three
of these shows demonstrate how it can work.”
“The one thing we really pride ourselves on is talent
development; we’re very happy to be doing programmes with
big names like Ian (Pattinson) or Gregor (Fisher) doing Rab
C again, or bringing Frankie Boyle back to Scotland, but these
things are only happening for us because we’ve built up a
relationship with the talent over the years,” adds Smith. “Both
the BBC and Channel 4 seem to have more power to do things
in Scotland so it’s still a big deal to get a network commission
out of London. It’s been a successful time, and we’re hoping to
bed it in.”
Comedy is a tricky business, and the makers of any Hollywood
comedy know that it’s not enough to throw money at ideas
and hope that they stick. For The Comedy Unit, the process by
which each project is developed is a carefully thought out and
unique process, tailored to the needs of the talent.
“It was great hearing Mark Thompson talking about bringing
back The Old Guys, Rab C and The Life of Riley; that’s three
major shows and it shows there’s a lot going on in Scotland
on the comedy front,” says Christie. “We’re always looking for
ways of indentifying talent, then finding the right production
model for each individual. Each show we make is developed
differently, and over the years we’ve got better at spotting the
right development pattern,” says Smith. “I think that’s because
most of the team are writers, comedy creatives, or have come
from the stand-up world, so we’re able to match the team
26

made in scotlanD TV
“If it makes us laugh,
that’s what we want, -
you can’t underestimate
the importance of that.”
- Rab Christie
Tommy and the Weeks
Other talents, like Frankie Boyle or Gregor Fisher, are already established
names, but again, The Comedy Unit have the same responsibility:
making sure that their programmes are tailored to making the star shine.
Rab C Nesbitt
and spot early on the right way to develop the
talent.”
One talent that Gavin and Rab are particularly
proud of is Limmy, an internet sensation through
his highly individual on-camera rants which
won him a huge online following. Smith says,
“After the pilot went out, I went online to look for
reviews. There were over a thousand comments
on his blog; it’s the first time I’ve been able to
have so many chances to gauge reaction.”
“Translating Limmy to television was an
interesting one; at times, it meant the costume
designer buying him the same trainers he was
actually wearing or recreating his bedroom to
get that DIY approach,” says Christie. “He’s very
proud of a sketch where he fires a gun at a car,
but that’s not so easy to do on your own, so we
we’re able to give him the chance to develop his
ideas on a larger scale too. The internet used to
scare commissioners, but Limmy shows that
talent can transfer successfully.”
“Frankie did his first panel show with us way back on Caledonian
MacBrains as a gag writer, then he did a stint on the panel. That’s not
necessarily the platform which made him the star he is now, but there
are a lot of people that tune in for him, and it’s great that he wants to
do his show with The Comedy Unit,” says Christie. “Rab C has been off
our screens for nine years, but when Iain Pattison was watching the
jeep crashing into Glasgow airport, he thought, ‘What would Rab say
about this?” He then wrote a monologue, that turned into a script, then
a Christmas special, and now, once again, a series. It makes you realise
how strong a character and a commentator Rab is; he makes salient
points about life. Right now, there’s a recession on, unemployment and
misery, and Rab C Nesbitt flourishes in that environment.”
Identifying the Frankie Boyles and Rac Cs of tomorrow is just as
important for The Comedy Unit as working with established acts; there’s
a new range of talent-spotting initiatives, and The Comedy Unit is
involved in several.
“There’s a Comedy Extra site on the BBC and we’ve always followed the
talent coming through at the Roughcuts night at The Stand. Radio can
also be a path, we also commission content for online pieces, which
opens us up to talent from across the network, not just Scotland,” says
Smith. “So new talent like, say, Tommy and the Weeks, you can see on
comedy extra.”
“And we just did a Stand-up Photobooth with Kevin Bridges; it’s great
to have someone like that to work with in a small spot then finding the
potential to develop it,” adds Christie. ”We’re one of the few companies
that still accept unsolicited scripts; the reason we do is that we’re always
looking for things that work for us. If it makes us laugh, that’s what we
want - you can’t underestimate the importance of that.”
www.comedyunit.co.uk
27

made in scotlanD TV
While war is no laughing matter,
for as long as there’s been
conflict, there’s always been
humour, from Dad’s Army to MASH.
Gary Tank Commander is a new sitcom
from the The Comedy Unit, and features
Greg McHugh as Gary McLintoch, a
soldier on leave from the Iraq war. For
McHugh, seeing Gary in his own sitcom
is the latest stage in the development of
a character that’s taken years to perfect.
“Gary really started off back in 2005
when I was doing a show at the
Edinburgh Festival with Will Andrews;
I think we might just have been reeling
from a one star review in a major
newspaper,” says McHugh. “Will was
already working at The Comedy Unit as
a developer for characters and asked
me if I had any ideas for him. The Iraq
War was very much in the news at the
time, and I thought that a sketch about
a tank commander in the army might be
funny.”
“We put it on at a night called
Roughcuts that The Comedy Unit
managed at The Stand comedy club
in Glasgow. Shane Allen, who is the
commissioning editor for comedy on
Channel 4, saw it and commissioned
it for an E4 Funny Cut. The character
was used again for an E4 show called
Blowout which won a Scottish BAFTA
in 2007. Then it became a show called
Gary’s War on More 4, winning a
Scottish BAFTA in 2008 before featuring
in The Will and Greg Sketch Show. By
then, the BBC had taken an interest and
Ewan Angus decided to take a punt on it
and asked for six episodes.”
“Comedy is like any other business,
you’re looking for the gaps; you have
to ask yourself, ‘What are people
talking about?” There’s lots of chav or
ned characters, but with the Iraq war,
there was a big political thing going
on, although not much actually being
said about what was happening in Iraq
itself,” says McHugh. “Trying to get
laughs out of something this serious
is hard, but when we improvised, we
did find comedy in Gary’s situation.
And the award really helped; a little
encouragement goes a long way.”
McHugh’s comic heroes include Steve
Coogan as Alan Partridge, Harry Enfield
and Paul Whitehouse, particularly The
Fast Show, and Simon Pegg, and he’d
love to see Gary Tank Commander go
on to reach the same comedy heights.
“When I look back on the first ten
minute show we did for E4, the
character wasn’t entirely formed, but
he’s more three dimensional now. Gary
is an unlikely hero, but from what I hear,
real squaddies love it.”
While admitting that the Scottish BAFTA
award for Gary made a big difference,
Greg puts Gary’s success down to
finding the right niche in the market and
exploiting it, together with a bit of luck
along the way.
28

made in scotlanD TV
“Comedy is like
any other business,
you’re looking for
the gaps.”
- Greg McHugh
29

made in scotlanD TV
BURNISTOUN
Ian Connell and Robert Florence as Sonny & Rico
“It was originally called something else, I can’t remember what
it was now. But the original idea was always ‘a Scottish place,
full of funny people,’ says Robert Florence of The Comedy
Unit series Burnistuon, which he co-wrote with Ian Connell.
“Originally it was about an English documentary-maker, making
a film about his father’s home town, going round meeting lots
of different characters,” adds Connell. “But when it came to TV
we felt like the documentary element was going to get in the
way and be too restrictive for a sketch show, so we ditched that
element.”
“Ideally we want the show to be loose enough that we can experiment with the
format if we want to, so we felt it would be better to tear down anything that might
limit our ability to do that,” adds Florence. “There are a few wee devices we want
to use in the series that will give it its own look and feel, I think. There’s just no
point shackling ourselves with a format that could get in the way of laughs.”
The Burnistoun project didn’t come out of nowhere; Connell and Florence cut their
teeth working with the experienced hands of The Comedy Unit, via Chewin’ The
Fat, Velvet Soup, Legit and Empty.
“It’s just a very positive place, with good people who really do care about comedy.
They care about being funny and giving the punter in the living room a reason to
laugh,” says Florence. “And they’re just very supportive of performers and writers.
Niall Clark, who is script editor on most of our stuff, was the guy who gave us our
break in writing, so the relationship goes back to the very beginning.”
Florence lists a number of classic
TV shows which he and Connell
have admired, including A Bit Of Fry
& Laurie, The Smell Of Reeves &
Mortimer, Mr Show, Monty Python
and Spike Milligan’s Q. “There are
some sketches I could watch a million
times, like Mr Show’s The Story of
Everest and The Audition. We’d love to
turn out stuff as good as that - clever
ideas taken to their funniest extremes,”
adds Florence.
“Thus far in our careers we’ve been two
guys stuck away in a room. We want to
be more than the writers that managed
to wangle their way into performing
in a sketch show. We want to establish
ourselves as a proper comedy double
act,” says Connell, and Florence feels
much the same way. “I’d hope that
Burnistoun does well enough to be
welcomed back. We’ve got enough ideas
to fill that town twice over.”
30

made in scotlanD TV
“I can still do experimental
and weird things on the telly,
but I can’t get away with it
looking a bit rubbish like it
does online.”
- Brian Limmond
Limmy
Internet sensation Limmy built up his
fanbase on the strength of videos
he made himself, often in his own
bedroom with a camcorder. His
sideways view of life soon brought
him to the attention of The Comedy
Unit, which commissioned a pilot
Limmy’s Show that won a Scottish
BAFTA nomination, and now he has
his own series. Making the leap from
self-produced videos to working as
part of The Comedy Unit team hasn’t
phased him in the least, or softened the
abrasive, but also wickedly acerbic style
of comedy he’s made his trademark.
“The telly stuff has to be more
professional, obviously. I can still do
experimental and weird things on the
telly, but I can’t get away with it looking
a bit rubbish like it does online. The
upside of that is that you get something
really professional looking, but the
downside is that it takes ten times
longer to make,” says Limmy. “My
online stuff tends to be just me, so it
was good to actually have other people
in the same shot at the same time. There
are other sketches in the show that I
could have done myself, but it would
have looked homemade - in a bad way.”
Limmy admits to being surprised at
the way his career has taken off, but
acknowledges the show-business truism
that even an overnight sensation takes a
lot of hard graft to achieve.
“Whenever I’ve wanted to spread
something around, like my podcast,
news of my live shows, etc, I’ve always
put a bit of work in to do it. So when
people pay my site a visit, I normally
know why,” he says. “The pilot’s pretty
much a sample episode, but I’ll be
trying to make each episode a bit
different from the one before, rather
than the same characters each episode
for six episodes. I’ve not had to rethink
much, just think more about getting my
humour across rather than thinking - if
they get it they get it - and if they don’t,
they don’t.”
And with Limmy’s next goal to get
another series, he’s prepared to let go
of the DIY aesthetic and embrace the
higher production values that will give
his comic creations full reign.
“Ultimately, the DIY thing isn’t that
important,” he says. “I don’t think it
would have looked right if everything
looked like it was done on my wee
camcorder. It would maybe have looked
fake and pretentious.”
31

made in scotlanD TV
TernTV
Growing upwards and
outwards since their initial
grounding with the hardy
perennial TV show The
Beechgrove Garden, Tern
TV has gone on to become one of the
UK’s most prolific indies, providing a
wealth of factual and documentary-based
programming to various channels. With
a self-styled remit for genre-bending
programming, from Britannia to The Spa
of Embarrassing Illnesses to KNTV, Tern
TV’s Harry Bell looks at a slate of projects
that are finding places on the schedules
of several major broadcasters.
“I think there’s something very counterintuitive
about the Tern TV style,
we’re always looking for new ways of
reworking television genres and finding
new platforms to put them on,” says Bell
as he takes time out for a quick sandwich
in Tern TV ’s Glasgow office. “We’re
working on another landscape-twist
idea for BBC Two with Nick Crane, with
whom we coined the mantra ‘geography
is the new history,’ and pioneered that
whole new genre of landscape TV – from
Map Man to Coast. We felt history on TV
had become mostly dusty bookish men
who never left their ivory towers and
it needed a blast of fresh air. Finding a
contemporary explorer who could tell
history stories through how people live
on the land today took us outside – and
that re-invigorated a whole genre.”
“We’re also very proud of a new
programme were making for Sky One,
called Celebrity Parents SOS, with the
acronym standing for Strictly Old School.
On the face of it, the show looks a bit like
a home-makeover show, but it’s really
what we’re calling a mend-over show!
We take celebrity parents like Shirley
Clarkson, mother of Top Gear’s Jeremy
Clarkson, or the parents of Jonathan
Ross, Charlotte Church or Vinnie Jones:
people from a generation who have a
certain kind of ‘back to basics’ thriftiness
at heart, and transplant them into
modern families who can’t cook and
don’t know how to mend,” says Bell.
“The celebrity parent then teaches them
skills to do things for themselves. It’s
not about bringing back national service
it’s about finding out things, like putting
Allen keys into radiators to bleed them,
or changing a plug; it’s amazing how
many families under 35 can’t do these
things. Unlike many make-over shows
in the property genre, it’s not about
spending huge amounts of money, it’s
about learning practical skills. There’s
obviously also a clever spin on celebrity
– just what are the Mums and Dads of
Britain’s household name stars like?”
Although Bell is keen to avoid using the
well worn Reithian phrase “educate,
entertain and inform,” there’s a positive
undercurrent to Tern TV’s choice of
projects which seek to entertain but
often provide an entry point into cerebral
subject-matter.
“We’re doing a couple of big series with
the BBC, one is a science series looked
at from an arts perspective, taking iconic
moments in science and seeing them
through a different lens. For example, we
might take Leonardo da Vinci’s Vetruvian
man, one of the world’s greatest and
most iconic images, and examine it as
a work of art; it’s an image that makes
sense to people in a way that a quadratic
equation never could. The DNA double
helix spiral staircase is another; we’re not
afraid to address really difficult scientific
subjects, but we want to do it with a new
twist rather than going down the route
of an academic presenter who would
lecture you on camera.”
The same spirit of innovation goes into
one of Tern TV’s other projects; as well as
making television programming, they’re
always keen to branch out into other
fields, including the development of
iPhone applications.
“We’re working on a joint venture
with Channel 4 on an IPhone game
application called Guts; the premise is an
exploration into the human body, looking
into diseases and illnesses, with two
animated cartoon characters who start
in the mouth of a character called The
General. From there they travel right on
through the human body, to the bottom
until they get chased through the colonic
region. It’s game-playing, but it’s also a
useful way to teach about how the body
works and for Tern TV, it’s a really big,
brave experiment into a new platform, a
new commercial content stream. I reckon
the iPhone games market is going to
be enormous, and we’re making it with
Tag Games in Dundee, who are global
leaders in the field.”
Another recent success for Tern TV was
their film The Father, The Son and The
Housekeeper that looked at one of the
most popular and controversial figures in
Ireland, Father Michael Cleary.
“We don’t often do single films, but this
one just landed on our lap. When Alison
Millar was clearing out her attic she came
across the original footage she’d shot
of Father Michael, when she was a film
student many years ago. We traced his
son, who is this handsome young man
who looks like Brad Pitt, and mixed his
current story with his father’s, whom
many people believe was the inspiration
for Father Ted,” says Bell. “He was an
amazingly funny man, you see him
taking off his jumper without taking his
cigarette out of his mouth, which can’t
have been easy, but he also represented
a huge historic bridge from which to tell
the story of Catholic Ireland as it was
then and it is now. The film was a hit for
RTE and BBC Storyville and much to our
surprise also managed to win one of the
world’s top documentary awards – a Prix
Italia.”
Tern TV can also look back on high-profile
successes like Channel 4’s Slabovia TV
and KNTV Sex, which won a BAFTA
nomination and two Royal Television
Society awards. ”We did have complaints
but then you can’t put people in bondage
masks on TV at 10am without offending
someone. Although it was Ofcom’s most
complained about programme for the
quarter, the award confirmed to us that
again we were being pioneering,” says
Bell.
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made in scotlanD TV
And for the future?
“It’s a tricky time for the industry; there
are points when it feels like the Gobi
desert out there,” says Bell. “But times
are changing, and I think we now find
it easier to talk to commissioners and
controllers because they’re the same
generation as us and people whom
we know well and trust. We’re a factual
company, so content is crucial and it
has to be rich and clever. Yes, we are
BBC facing - traditionally that’s where
a lot of work is: there are times when
commercial markets appears to be
freefalling so the competition is intense,
but we’ve held our own. We’d still like to
have that huge kind of Supernanny hit,
but it does feels like we’re fishing in the
right water.”
www.terntv.co.uk
“I think there’s something very
counter-intuitive about the
Tern TV style, we’re always
looking for new ways of
reworking television genres
and finding new platforms to
put them on.” - Harry Bell
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SUPER UMAMI
Set up in 2006, Super Umami is an
independent animation studio based
just outside Stirling, creating not only
animation but also concept design, art
direction and development. The name
comes from ‘umami’ a Japanese word,
which first appeared in the late 1960’s
and suggests something truly tasty.
“My name is Gary Marshall, and I just
happen to have a name that’s extremely
common; you only have to Google it
to find out that there’s plenty of others,
including Gary Marshall, director of
Pretty Woman,” says Super Umami’s
Managing Director. “So the name Super
Umami works well in providing a sense
of our originality and helps us stand out
from the crowd.”
“I’d been working as a commercial artist
in London and laterally as a freelance
animation director in Scotland for
several years and thought setting up my
own studio made sense, because the
technological advances in 3D software
meant that there was a potential
increase in the speed of animated
production. I got involved in the making
of a very successful animated short
called Rogue Farm and that led to a
65 x one-minute TV series for Red Kite
Animation called The Imp. The studio
was based in Edinburgh for six months,
but I decided to move out to Stirling
because it is an area I know well. There’s
even a fantastic café just up the road,
and working in the country is a nice
change from the hectic nature of city
life.”
Marshall’s animation influences range
from the classic UPA shorts of the 1960’s
to the wondrous output of the Japanese
Studio Ghibli brand, but Super Umami
has built up its own distinctive style and
approach to animation; Marshall might
not have the reputation of Ghibli’s
Hayao Miyazaki just yet, but he’s
certainly carved out his own successful
niche in the field of UK animation.
The unique and ambitious nature of
Rogue Farm and The Imp soon caught
the eye of other industry professionals
who might previously have thought that
making animated programmes in the
UK was beyond their capacity.
“Our work on the KNTV series (KNTV
Science – 2006, KNTV Philosophy –
2007, KNTV Sex – 2008) came about
when I was asked to submit some
designs for a TV show brief by Tern TV.
I only had time to do one drawing, but
fortunately for me, that was the one that
got picked. KNTV was a great project
for Super Umami, both creatively and
commercially. It’s really helpful to be
in the kind of situation where you’re
involved from the start, so you can work
towards what the client requires, whilst
designing characters and locations
with the production pipeline in mind.
The greater level of creative freedom
saves time and money and ultimately
provides the best results for the
project,” says Marshall.
“Super Umami’s production pipeline
suited the remit for KNTV. It was, for
the most part, a set-presented TV show,
and the subject matter was a lot of fun.
We were able to do a lot on a limited
budget and as well as winning the
Royal Television Society award two
years in a row, we were nominated for
a British Animation Award, up against
Aardman and Collingwood O’Hare,
which was a great honour for us.”
“In the old days, making a series like
KNTV in the UK, or this year’s animated
sitcom pilot One Star would have
been an impossibility. Tern TV’s David
Murdoch doesn’t think like that, and
together with Murray Hunter of TV show
Absolutely, came up with this idea for
a B&B that’s the worst in all of space,
and that’s what became One Star. I
think we really raised the bar on what
we could do technically on that one,
going from only a handful of characters
and one main location on KNTV to ten
characters and half a dozen locations
for One Star. And One Star was 29
minutes, rather than 10, a big difference
in production terms. So we were
pleased to see One Star go on to gain
recognition at the Annecy Animation
Festival, one of only 50 TV projects to
be selected from a field of 400, and it
was one of the most watched shows
there.’’
“Now we really can think big with
the projects we have in the pipeline;
it’s possible to visualise animation
in a much more rapid and complex
way than we did with, say, The Imp.
We’re developing a feature film with
Michael Rose, Executive Producer of
Aardman’s Chicken Run, and there are
several other possibilities for the future
in terms of doing sitcom animation or
longer format children’s shows,” says
Marshall. “And the great thing about
creating and working with animated
characters is that they’re always willing
to work with you again!”
www.superumami.com
One Star
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made in scotlanD TV
KNTV Sex One Star One Star
“The great thing about
creating and working with
animated characters is
that they’re always willing
to work with you again!”
- Gary Marshall
KNTV
One Star
One Star
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made in scotlanD TV
Sue Bourne
Joan & Irene from Wellpark Production’s latest documentary Red Lion
Wellpark Pro
Sue Bourne named her
production company
after the street she was
brought up in Alloway,
Ayr. Since the company’s
formation eight years ago
Bourne has made a name for
herself as the author of a series
of highly individual, high profile
documentaries, including My
Street, Wedding Days, Mum and
Me, and Love, Life and Death
in a Day. As she contemplates
her own homecoming for
2009, opening an office north
of the border, Bourne hopes
to capitalise on her growing
reputation for accomplished and
award winning television work.
“I like to think I’ve ploughed a
quiet little furrow for myself. I think
these days people probably do now
recognise my style of filmmaking, my
voice, the way I approach my subjects.
The films are high profile because I
spend six months making each film and
I like getting big audiences so I choose
subjects that I think will appeal to lots
of people. The evolution of My Street
for instance was born out of my belief
that there’s a story behind every door.
So where better to test that theory than
in my own back yard. I think if I were
to describe my most recent films they
would all be a celebration of ordinary
people, explorations of how we live
our lives today. And what I enjoy
doing more than anything is finding
the extraordinary in the apparently
ordinary. Like many of my films My
Street was a very simple idea. But it
worked - it struck a chord with everyone
who saw it and ignited a debate about
isolation, neighbourliness… and
indeed, how we all lead our lives these
days.“
Wellpark isn’t a huge enterprise. In
fact Bourne reckons it’s probably the
smallest production company in the
country. Much of the time it’s just her
working on ideas in the front room.
Only when she has a commission,
or development money, can she take
on someone else to work alongside
her. But this lack of overheads allows
Bourne to spend time looking for ideas
that appeal to her. And then once she
gets the commission she works with
the smallest possible production team
to ensure that the budget goes in front
of the camera and nowhere else. Apart
from very careful accounting Bourne
also has a very personal approach to
filmmaking and is involved minutely
in each stage of the process. Not much
delegation goes on at Wellpark.
“Wellpark isn’t a business empire,
it’s a little big company, whose main
purpose is to allow me to make my
own films. To survive, you obviously
have to build good relationships
with your commissioners. But really
the key to survival is to make very
good films that audiences enjoy and
remember. Above all I try to make films
I personally find fascinating, so I try
and stick to what I believe in and what I
am good at.”
Emphasising the need for personal
involvement in her work, Bourne
recently turned the cameras onto
herself and her own family for Mum
And Me, a documentary that explored
how her own family were coping with
her mother’s Alzheimer’s.
“It was certainly a huge and difficult
decision to make this film because
it was exposing my mother, my
daughter, myself and my family. It’s
not something you do lightly but I felt
we had something important to say.
Any documentaries I’d seen about
Alzheimer’s were grim beyond belief,
yet our experience, because of how
fantastic Mum is, had been different.
My mother taught us to laugh and to
have fun, in spite of the disease and the
36

made in scotlanD TV
Sue on location for Red Lion
Robert in Red Lion
ductions
Mum and Me is nominated for
a Grierson award 2009 in the
catagory Best Documentary on a
Contemporary subject, winners
announced in autumn 2009.
confusion that came in its wake. And
that is why I wanted to make the film –
even at the cost of exposing myself and
my family. I am glad we did the film
but because of its rather brutal honesty
it did polarise people. I think perhaps
with a subject like this you are almost
bound to get wildly different responses.
And it was a film that people either
loved. Or hated.”
Mum and Me won several awards and
was swamped with praise, described
by many as inspirational. But Bourne
was also vilified and even got sent hate
mail. “The level of vitriol rather took me
by surprise but on balance I am glad
we made the film. Apart from anything
else Holly and I have a wonderful
record of our time with my mother.
And Mum is also now something of
a minor celebrity in Ayr when we go
out with her and that is rather lovely
because she just loves the attention.”
Whether looking at her own family,
her neighbours or other people and
stories, Bourne reckons trust is a key
element in ensuring that her films get
under the surface of the subjects they
tackle. “Probably what distinguishes
all the work that I do is the intimacy. I
think I am quite good at interviewing
people because I am curious – about
them, about their stories, about the
lives we all lead. I want to find out
about everything. But you will only get
people to open up to you if they trust
you. And to get that degree of trust on
camera you not only have to give a lot
of yourself, you also have to ensure
that you look after people who give
you their trust. So you have to protect
them, from all manner of things. I
think filmmaking is about choices, it is
about how you want to live your own
life,” she says. “In the present climate,
it’s important to have a strong moral
code, and to form honest relationships,
whether with your commissioning
editors or with the people who are
taking part in your films.”
Another recent Wellpark project was
Love, Life and Death In A Day. Again,
another simple idea examining the
way we live now – take one day and
tell the story of all the births, deaths
and marriages that happened on that
one day. Bourne this time had far
less control than usual in terms of
who or what she found – she had to
make a film out of the people who
happened to be getting married, giving
birth, or being buried in one random
twenty four hour period. And it is the
randomness, the not knowing what
you are going to find that she found
particularly exciting about this film.
“To survive and make good films you
have to take risks, you have to try
different things, think of new ways
of telling stories. It’s an endlessly
fascinating business and for me that
challenge just makes filmmaking more
and more exciting. I cannot think of
a better, more interesting, fun way of
making a living… And now, as Wellpark
Scotland opens its doors for business
who knows what stories and what films
now lie ahead for me back in my home
country.”
Bourne’s latest documentary Red Lion
will screen in Cutting Edge on Channel
4 in October 2009.
wellparkproductions@yahoo.com
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made in scotlanD TV
SKYLINE
PRODUCTIONS
As one of the longest surviving independents in
Scotland, Edinburgh-based company Skyline
Productions has a track record for groundbreaking
feature documentaries like Touch the Sound - a Sound
Journey with Evelyn Glennie and Alison Watt - A
Painter’s Eye. For Skyline’s Leslie Hills, a key element in
the company’s success has been their ability to adapt,
with the focus less on the quantity of programmes
made, than on maintaining the high quality that Skyline’s
international reputation demands.
“Skyline has grown, contracted, divided and collaborated
as the changing markets dictate and as our own particular
interests and aspirations led us. Looking back, there was
one year in the 1980s when we made more hours for
Channel 4 than any other company. We’ve made current
affairs, comedy, drama series, political documentaries,
arts documentaries, magazine programmes and more,
but now, we make a few hours per year, and that’s our
choice,” says Hills.
“At the moment what we concentrate on specifically
is international co-production of documentaries
for theatrical release. We’ve been co-producing
internationally since the early 1990s and have especially
benefited from the opening up of the German film
industry after re-unification. The new governments,
both federal and in the Lander, found themselves heir
to a film industry that was on the one hand marooned in
the past and on the other practically non-existent. Their
answer was to kick start initiatives by injecting cash
and, just as enthusiastically, by welcoming international
collaboration and co-production. The Lander have their
own funds on top of which there are federal funds, and a
fund that guarantees towards the budget, the percentage
of that budget spent in Germany.”
Looking beyond domestic markets and thinking about
making programmes on a world-wide scale is a key facet
of Skyline’s future plans, and Hills points out that the
company’s success in Germany has also provided them
with a platform to kick-start their future production slate.
“The thinking behind it is, that if you have managed to
raise most of the budget then this success should be
recognised, and we’ve found the German industry is
good at rewarding success. The German Government
also funds the enormous annual shindig that is the
German Film Prize, run by the German Film Academy. It’s
very glitzy and the champagne runs free all night,” says
Hills. “But in more practical terms, the best thing about
it are the large cash prizes attached to the Lola awards
presented on the night. In the finance plan for the next
co-production is the money we won for Touch the Sound
- a Sound Journey with Evelyn Glennie, and also money
awarded to us after the number of seats sold in Germany
reached a certain threshold. The German funds also
provide a generous recoupment corridor to producers.
All these factors mean it is easier for us to undertake our
next project.”
Skyline look not only to Europe but the US for funding,
although their next project takes them even further afield:
to Japan. Continuing the Skyline strategy of working with
world-renowned artists, their next film features Susumu
Shingu, famed for his sculptures and installations.
Auld Lang Syne
Auld Lang Syne
Susumu Shingu
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made in scotlanD TV
“Scotland’s always
punched above our weight
by operating outside our
own boundaries.”
- Leslie Hills
Alison Watt
Alison Watt
“Breathing Earth - Susumu Shingu
working with the Wind starts shooting in
the autumn in Japan, following Shingu as
he moves around the globe looking for the
place to build his creative village. We’ll be in
the Ruhr, formerly the industrial heartland
of Europe where on the derelict bings
(waste tips) he’ll be erecting windmills
of corton steel,” says Hills. “We’ll also be
filming in Matera on the tip of Italy on the
cliffs which catch the wind from Africa,
and also in Paris, and on the west coast of
Scotland where Shingu will work with the
Mackintosh School of Art on a fascinating
and innovative project. We already have
the Franco-German TV network arte and
Finnish broadcasting service YLE on board
along with several Lander funds, federal
funds and of course, the crucial assistance
of Scottish Screen without which we could
not co-produce. It’s a long-term project,
two years in the conception and probably
almost as long in the making and we’ll be
working across languages and cultures.
That’s just what we like at Skyline.”
But Skyline’s plans also include projects
which are specifically Scottish in nature and
content; one programme scheduled for a
domestic broadcast in the next few months
focuses on the origins and influence of one
of Scotland’s best-known and loved songs,
Auld Lang Syne.
“It’s important to Skyline to have these
international connections but, in my
opinion, the connection to Scotland is just
as important. Yes, you could say we’re a
wee country at the far end of a wee island,
offshore to an old continent, but it would
also be true to say we’ve always punched
above our weight by operating outside our
own boundaries,” says Hills. “The Artworks
programme, Alison Watt - A Painter’s Eye,
is a case in point. Artworks lets independent
producers work in the arts within Scotland.
And towards the end of the year BBC will
broadcast our programme on Auld Lang
Syne which is a celebration of the spirit
of a song that has travelled the world and
been adopted by diverse peoples. It has
a central, universal message, and we’ve
tried to reflect that in the programme.”
It’s a busy slate of productions, but one
that Hills is keen to keep moving on an
international stage.
“As result of all our international work, we
have also been developing our research,
copy-writing, translation and transcription
service which operates out of Paris using
German, Spanish, French and English, plus
an associate web design and solutions
business operating out of Madrid,” says
Hills. “We have a couple of projects on the
horizon - but nothing certain at the moment
- and this is the joy of the business and to
an extent of working across Europe. Things
are happening all the time internationally,
so there’s always something new on the
horizon.”
www.skyline.uk.com
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made in scotlanD TV
Central Station
An artist downs his tools and picks up a megaphone to tell
the world about what he’s created. The image suggested by
ISO to promote their Central Station project is a succinct
distillation of what the project is designed to do: give the
artistic community a practical means of trumpeting what
it can do. This ambitious multiplatform project launches in
September, using digital technology to help artists get the
word out about what they’re creating.
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made in scotlanD TV
“Central Station is an online project for the art, design
and film community,” says ISO’s Director Damien
Smith. “The project will build one of the largest social
networks for artists in the country by providing a
space for them to focus their digital activity and new work.
It will use popular digital technologies and techniques to
combine online activity with a series of new commissions,
access to rich digital archives, live events and learning
resources.”
Billed as: ‘A creative space. Bringing together people,
projects, collections and events’, the project’s online home
will be at thisiscentralstation.com. It’s not about cash prizes,
or working exclusively with Scottish artists; Central Station is
conceived from the need to provide a platform that can work
on an international and inclusive scale.
“We see contemporary creative practice as not being limited
to regional or national borders or to specific industries
- the new creative landscape is about cross-disciplinary
relationships, connecting communities and audiences; the
synergy that occurs when real world experience is combined
with the potential of digital connectivity,” says Smith. “We are
exploring how best to aggregate this type of activity across
social media networks, where access to collaborators, means
of distribution and production are available to all. These are
powerful new tools and ways of working. Ultimately we are
looking to create a channel for new voices to showcase their
work to the world and for established practitioners to explore
new creative spaces.”
ISO have already established themselves as one of Scotland’s
foremost and most innovative industry practitioners, and
the Central Station project sees them working hand-in-glove
with DigiCult, whose track record on developing digital shorts
makes them the ideal partner.
“ISO are a team of award-winning designers, filmmakers and
software developers working across television, interactive
installations and multiplatform development. We are winners
of the Royal Television Society Award for Graphics; we’re
designers of the interface for the BBC iPlayer; and we’ve
worked on many pioneering digital projects taking film and
television content online, including the Channel 4 / Nesta
MESH scheme for animators and the long-running digital film
project DigiCult,” says Smith.
“ISO and Central Station’s relationship with DigiCult will help
connect the site to the largest network of active filmmakers
in Scotland, a network built on eight years of development
and production with the most exciting new and emergent
talent in the country’s moving-image community. To date,
DigiCult’s talent pool has produced dozens of award-winning
shorts, features and independent work, securing numerous
commissions from the BBC, Channel Four, Film Four, and
financiers nationally and internationally. All this experience
will help to shape the Central Station platform.”
Smith and DigiCult’s Paul Welsh have looked into the models
provided by existing online projects, ensuring that Central
Station is a step ahead in providing a hub that’s not just an
online presence.
“Sometimes a name attaches itself to a project. The
Central Station title was early shorthand for something
that symbolised a point of connection, of transitory
relationships, of motion and new experiences. We also liked
the fact it had universality. All great cities have a Central
Station,” says Smith. “We are fans of a number of online
projects, such as the Behance network ArtReview, Brooklyn
Museum, FormFiftyFive, or Tate Online, but many are too
industry specific - just for artists, or TV people or filmmakers.
They don’t recognise the flow of people and ideas between
different sectors. Also a lot of these projects exist solely
online - we are programming a year of live events, talks,
happenings and commissions to feed activity and stimulate
the members in the first phase of the project. Many
traditional social media projects are actually quite solitary
experiences - we want to provide as many opportunities for
collaboration as possible.”
“Probably the biggest challenge will be building and
maintaining the community. Unlike one of our traditional
TV or digital projects Central Station is an ongoing, living
project. It needs to respond to the community, offer them
space to grow and develop new work and relationships.
We are hopeful that the combination of online / offline
activity, rich archives, and the range of leading artists we
are working with will help sustain this in the early days -
beyond that it passes to the membership who will shape it’s
direction,” says Smith. “The success criteria are varied - we
have targets for the number of events, levels and types of
engagement, number of new works created and so on, but
ultimately if we can foster new creative networks, enable
some great work and introduce a new wave of people to
explore online activity, we will be happy.”
www.thisiscentralstation.com
“We see contemporary
creative practice as not
being limited to regional
or national borders or to
specific industries.”
- Damien Smith
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made in scotlanD TV
Savalas
“Since relocating, the collaborative nature
Kahl Henderson
One of the first Film City residents was Savalas,
which proudly boasts its status as ‘Scotland’s
largest sound post-production facility, from
feature films to games, television, radio, music,
commercials and online content.’ Savalas was
founded in 1998 by Kahl Henderson, Giles Lamb
and Michael Mackinnon, all of whom started as
dubbing mixers before going into business as a
full-size facility.
42
Film City Glasgow

made in scotlanD TV
Voice Over in Dolby Premier mix theatre
of our work has really flourished.”- Kahl Henderson
“Film City as both an organisation and
a building has given us space. We
had outgrown our old place, but were
happy to make do. It wasn’t until we
moved here that we realised how
cramped we were both physically
and creatively. It sounds a little
pretentious, but when you’re given
your own space, it makes the creative
part of the job so much easier. Since
relocating, the collaborative nature of
our work has really flourished,” says
Henderson.
“Before moving to Film City, we had
to go to another studio to complete
film projects. There wasn’t a Dolby
certified facility north of Manchester;
so it meant we had to travel... the
‘four weeks in Copenhagen, Dublin
or London’ novelty wears off pretty
quickly. Our Dolby Premier mix
theatre has galvanised the entire
sound-post process. The fact that we
can do everything here in Scotland
makes it so much simpler. It also
allows us to focus on the fun stuff.”
“Until very recently it wasn’t possible
to finish a film in Scotland, the
infrastructure just wasn’t here. It
takes bold people to push an idea
like Film City forward, but we’re all
getting started. I want Savalas to be a
core part of our industry. We can only
progress if the industry flourishes and
Film City as a group of companies and
individuals has to be instrumental in
that growth,” says Henderson. “Our
next big project is Peter Mullan’s
Neds which is currently shooting in
Glasgow. Our very first feature film
was The Magdalene Sisters, so it’s
really exciting that everything has
come full circle and we are working
with Peter again.”
www.savalas.co.uk
Projector
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Brian Cox’s Jute Journey
Hopscotch
Now in their tenth year, Hopscotch Films have moved
into Glasgow’s Film City with a busy slate of drama and
documentary projects and Brian Cox’s Jute Journey at the
top of their list.
“We’re making Brian Cox’s Jute Journey for BBC Scotland,
and it’ll be Brian’s first experience of presenting an
documentary,” says Hopscotch Films’ Managing Director,
John Archer. “We filmed in Dundee and Kolkata, and the
film tells the story of the Dundee Jute workers who went to
work there in the 1950s and who are now retired in Dundee.
Brian’s parents worked in the Jute mills of Dundee, so
it’s an emotional journey for him, particularly seeing the
conditions of today’s Kolkata mills, where they use much of
the same machinery.”
around you. And there’s a buzz when the studio has a drama
going on. Production is what we are all about. And it is a
great address.”
“We want to ensure that our short film success moves
on into longer drama and our track record of producing
engaging documentaries for BBC Scotland transfers to more
network commissions. Film City is the perfect base from
which to make that happen.”
www.hopscotchfilms.co.uk
Other current projects include Little Red Hoodie for Cinema
Extreme, and a new short from writer/director Joseph Briffa,
to be produced by Britt Crowley, funded by Scottish Screen.
“We have a large production office, an offline suite (all with
a handy shared kitchen) plus access to the meeting spaces
and production facilities of Film City. It’s great to have both
Serious and Savalas on the doorstep,” says Archer. “Besides
the production facilities, there is a corridor culture of
sharing information. There’s no doubt that it is encouraging
to have people who work in similar businesses working
Little Red Hoodie
44

KEO North
made in scotlanD TV
KEO North
Established in 1996, Keo Films has
been running for 12 years from their
London office where they are probably
best known for long-running Channel
4 series, River Cottage, with Hugh
Fearnley Whittingstall. They opened
their Scottish office at Film City Glasgow
at the beginning of 2009, and are
working on productions and ideas along
the lines of adventure, anthropology
and cooking which have already brought
them significant success. “We currently
have two rooms in Film City: one for
production the other for development;
we are also in the beginning stages
of installing an edit suite and we have
recently given both rooms a face-lift.
So our home at Film City is looking
particularly smart at the moment,” says
Craig Hunter, Executive Producer at Keo
North. “Film City is a hub of creativity
for TV production companies and other
creative companies - it’s great being
able to share the communal spaces with
others in the industry and find out what’s
going on. It’s a relatively new location
which we are convinced will continue
to develop and become an established
hotspot in the Scottish industry. We are
pleased to be part of it.”
As they settle into their new Govan
offices, Keo North already has a full
slate of projects to get started with,
maximising the advantages they see in
the Scottish media industry.
“We are gearing up for the edit of a
BBC2 series called Megacities - an
observational documentary about living
in Lagos, Nigeria, and we’re about to
start filming a brand new foraging,
adventure series on the west coast
of Scotland for Channel 4. Also, in
development we have a host of KEOlike
projects too,” says Hunter. “For KEO
North, our main goal is to build on the
already established reputation of KEO
films and where possible utilise the
Scottish landscape for our productions.
We want to develop and contribute to
a strong talent base in Scotland. Being
part of the Film City community means
we are able to meet staff, old and new,
regularly - whilst keeping up to date
with production news and gossip!”
www.keofilms.com
River Cottage
Crocodile media
Crocodile Media is an independent
production company set up in 2008,
producing documentary and factual
entertainment programmes for the
domestic and international markets.
In 2009, they expanded from their
Manchester base and set up their new
Scottish office at Film City Glasgow.
“Film City has provided Crocodile with
the perfect production office for us to
set up our Scottish HQ. Tiernan Kelly
and his team have been so helpful and
were able to work to our exact needs
in terms of providing all manner of
things (including space, desks and)
all within the dates we required,” says
Crocodile’s Rachel Boyd.
“Film City Glasgow is the ideal location
for Crocodile, we love being in the
heart of such a creative environment
with such close proximity to the
facilities of buildings such as BBC
Scotland at Pacific Quay.”
Crocodile Media’s move has enabled
them to start on a packed slate of
commissions, and Boyd is keen to
use their new office as a bridgehead
for opening up new areas of potential
commissions and ideas.
“We’ve currently got several one hour
documentary films in production for
broadcast; we’ve got Ghosts In The
Machine and Watching The Dead for
BBC Four, and Crime Scene Insects for
the Crime & Investigation Network.
Crocodile Media plan to complete
many future productions in Scotland
and our Film City base is absolutely
essential to bringing this plan to
fruition!”
Crime Scene Insects
45

made in scotlanD TV
Waterloo Road
SHED
Shed Media use the slogan, ‘we
know drama’ to encapsulate one
of television’s most enviable
track records for producing popular
TV entertainment creating series
like Waterloo Road, Bad Girls and
Footballers’ Wives. And writer Ann
McManus certainly knows more
than a few things about engaging an
audience; as well as working on all of
the above, she worked on Coronation
Street as a deputy story editor and cut
her teeth on fondly remembered stv
series High Road.
Now McManus and her Shed
colleagues are looking to share their
knowledge and knack of good drama
by launching their own course, in
writing for television, in conjunction
with Glasgow’s Caledonian College.
“I’d hesitate to say there’s been a
snobbery about teaching TV writing
as opposed to film writing, but if you
look at the number of TV productions
against the number of films, then
compare that to the many writing
courses preparing students to write for
film rather than television, the figures
tell their own story,” says McManus.
“ There’s a tendency to see television
writing as a step down from film, but
if you look at the stars of popular US
television shows that’s simply not
true; I’m sure they don’t think they’re
slumming when they’re reaching
bigger audiences with television than
their films ever managed.”
The new course is a practical one,
looking at how a writer can develop
their craft to meet the needs of mass
audiences and also examining how
the television industry has developed, preparing students for the tricky business
of making a living as a script writer or editor.
“Good television drama is about characters and action, but it only works if
it’s well-structured. Young writers have to get a sense of how that structure
can be created, how to build up the drama to the hook before the advertising
break, or the end of a show,” says McManus. “I wouldn’t say there’s a specific
formula, there’s a big difference between how Coronation Street and Eastenders
are written. Eastenders is more hard-hitting and gritty, whereas Coronation
Street often has a warmth and campness in the way that Bad Girls did, or that
Footballers’ Wives took to more extreme levels.”
While scriptwriting courses for film are ten-a-penny, writing for television is less
frequently favoured in UK colleges and universities, but Shed Media is keen for
their collaboration with Caledonian University to break new ground and offer
fresh opportunities to students.
“Eileen Gallagher was approached when Gus Macdonald became chancellor
at Caledonian University. He wanted a course built around the media of TV,
specifically drama and she brought the idea back to Shed to cook up the course,”
says McManus. “I think it’s something that is really needed; I had my own training
on High Road and Coronation Street, but I’m also well aware that chances for
writers are few and far between and to take full advantage of them they have to
be properly trained. The building blocks of TV writing can be taught so students
can move to getting writing jobs directly in the industry, jobs which can be
lucrative and rewarding.”
“We’ll be involving industry experts like Gaynor Holmes and Anne Mensah, and
we’ll also be using materials created for programmes like Waterloo Road. Shed’s
experience is substantial; we’ve done over three hundred hours of television,
including fifty Footballers’ Wives and a hundred Waterloo Roads, so we can show
different drafts of scripts to students and let them see how the work develops.
We can also show them upcoming scripts, or recent work like Hope Springs and
discuss why certain things do or don’t work,” says McManus. “With Hope Springs,
we spent two years developing the project; at first when the women came to
Scotland they fell in love with it, then we changed it around so that they hated it
because they’d rather be in Barbados. Then the final version at the treatment stage
saw a mixture of both, with the main characters changing their opinions over the
eight episodes. Looking back, it might have worked better if the episodes had
been self-contained; you have to work with the attention span of the audience,
and maybe we weren’t successful in estimating what that attention span was for a
Sunday night drama. But it’s all useful experience.”
www.shed-media.com
46

made in scotlanD TV
FINESTRIPE
PRODUCTIONS
A Glasgow-based media company
producing quality popular
factual television programmes,
Finestripe Productions was originally
set up by Katie Lander and Sue
Summers in November 2004 to make
high quality documentaries and factual
entertainment. They’re now based in
the Film City complex in Glasgow, and
finding it to be a perfect fit for their
company’s growth.
“It’s great having a critical mass of
production services. It’s been an ideal
situation for us recently as we are using
Serious Facilities and Savalas on our
latest series for BBC One Daytime,”
says Finestripe’s Katie Lander. “We are
currently making a third series of Shrink
Rap for More4, a daytime series for BBC
One and an arts series for BBC Four
called Living with Art Deco.
Shrink Rap’s impressive guest-list has featured names like Joan Rivers, Gene
Simmons, Robin Williams, Tony Curtis, Sir Salman Rushdie, Stephen Fry, Kathleen
Turner and Dr Pamela Connolly interviewing her comedian husband Billy for the
show.
Other Finestripe productions have included Touring Britain, a series of
programmes broadcast in early 2009, with design and architectural historian
David Heathcote exploring Britain through the guide books of the past; Heathcote
also presents Finestripes’s new series on Art Deco designs. Each project is made
possible by the experience of the Finestripe team, who have plenty of experience
making popular entertainment shows.
“Sue was a Fleet Street journalist before moving into TV and was co producer on
Kevin MacDonald’s BAFTA-winning Touching The Void, while I was producer on all
Jonathan Ross’s early series and then went on to produce Sean Hughes, Jo Brand,
Alan Davies and others,” says Lander. “Working at Film City has been excellent for
us; Tiernan Kelly and his team have provided two excellent well-equipped offices
and we’ve settled in really quickly. Film City Glasgow feels like a creative hub and
at Finestripe, we have a strong development slate that we hope to translate into
new business for 2010.”
www.finestripe.com
“Working at Film City has been excellent for us”- Kate Lander
David Heathcote
47

th
MTPOne North
“I
used to be a private
detective,” says Simon
Mallinson, head of
Scotland’s most successful
commercials company MTP.
Since 1988, MTP has been
making up to 40 commercials
a year, as well as occasional
diversions into short films
and documentaries. But
it’s his track record for
delivering high-concept,
big brand adverts that has
made Mallinson a celebrated
figure in Scotland’s film and
television community, with
over two hundred major
awards won to date.
“Being a producer is easier than being
a private investigator because the
problems you have to solve are usually
easier,” says Mallinson. “The solution
tends to be: find the right person to
do the job for the money that you
have. That’s much simpler than finding
someone who’s missing who doesn’t
want to be found.”
The early years of MTP may have
been an uphill climb, but as he chats
about his work over a business lunch,
Mallinson doesn’t seem likely to be
returning to his private detective days.
“When I started, I worked at SSK for
four years. Because they wanted to sell
their facilities, they started trying to
make ads. I thought that was the wrong
way around and I set up a company
based on the London model of the
production company, where the right
facility was chosen for each individual
job. I was offered a job in London but
after four years in Glasgow, I’d caught
the Bill Forsyth, Charlie Gormley film
vibe and wanted to stay in Scotland.
The company was called Turnham
Productions and I opened Mallinson
Turnham Productions in a room that
cost £25 a week to rent. The funding for
the company was supposed to come
from the profit of the first job which was
a corporate training film for Honeywell.
Carol Smiley was the presenter. She
wore a white robe and very little else
and led the viewer through a labyrinth
of smoke which symbolised the
confusion surrounding the choice of
heating controllers. The job went well
but Turnham went bust. I never got paid
and I changed the ‘T’ to ‘Television’ and
Mallinson Television Productions was
born.”
“Ads were really what I wanted to
make. There was a recession on then as
well, but I could see the possibilities.
It was about linking the Scottish film
industry to the Scottish advertising
industry. If I got that right, and that
involved bringing in the right directors,
there would be a Scottish advertising
production industry. I felt that if I could
make MTP a great production company,
Scotland would benefit in the long
run. I had to earn the respect and the
trust of the filmmakers and I did this
by being as honest as possible about
what each budget could afford. Ads may
not be quite the same as films, TV or
documentaries but they are valid pieces
of work and a real discipline.”
Mallinson set up offices in London and
Manchester to match MTP Scotland
but didn’t call them MTP. “I prefer the
model where the other offices have their
own culture,” says Mallinson. “Onward,
Mustard and MTP all benefit from this.
Between them last year they produced
twice as many ads as MTP and over a
60 Second Finish
Bullmers
48
Irn-Bru

“There’s less of a difference
between arts for art’s sake
and arts for money’s sake
than people think.”
- Simon Mallinson
Simon Mallinson
£1m worth of documentaries,
but the responsibility for all
this work lies with the people
who run the companies. I
can’t involve myself in what
they do and run MTP as well.”
Mallinson clearly takes as
much pride in the small ads as
in the big ones; he is, to coin
an overused term, a creative,
taking great pride in how each
project comes to fruition.
“There’s less of a difference
between arts for art’s sake and
arts for money’s sake than
people think. People used
to go into film thinking that
they’re going into art, and that
somehow advertising was the
devil, and they were selling
their souls because they were
selling soap powder. Perhaps
that’s not got the same kudos as
being an auteur of a film, but at
MTP, we are who we are.”
“You have to be proud of what
you do, and we’re always
proudest of our last ad. We’re
really happy with what we did
for Subway last year, and the
work that we’ve done for the
Government is really rewarding.
People don’t realise how closely
the Government monitor the
impact of what they do and
we have played a vital role
in changing the way Scottish
people think about really
important issues like racism,
health and domestic abuse.
We’ve got a great ongoing
relationship with Irn-Bru and
their advertising agency. Their
take on the High School Musical
genre will be an award winner
this year. Last year’s Irn-Bru ‘If’
ad cleaned up at the Roses and
Scottish Advertising Awards,
beating Onward’s John West
Salmon ad. Different ads appeal
in different markets. The John
West Salmon ad went on to win
a Silver Lion at Cannes which is
one of the most coveted awards
in the world whereas Irn-Bru
didn’t even make the shortlist.
The Irn-Bru adverts have always
been brilliantly written so that
they have a special kind of
impact here in Scotland. Taxi
drivers often ask, ‘You’re in
advertising? What ads do you
do?’ And when you tell them,
they say, ‘Oh, aye, Irn-Bru,
Made In Scotland from Girders.’
That was the slogan 30 years
ago! I hope that in 30 years’
time, whoever’s producing
the Irn Bru ads has to listen to
the same praise about our ads
when he or she is talking to
their taxi driver. Or even better
still, I hope it will be me in that
taxi.”
Mallinson has built up an
impressive roster of top
directors working from their
Lynedoch Street offices near
Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Park,
with talent like Jonny Campbell,
Sam Miller, Steve Burrows,
Zam Salim, Dom Bridges, David
Eustace, Martin Wedderburn,
Damien O’Donnell and Alex
Telfer all directing recent
assignments.
Despite a plethora of
international awards, Mallinson
has plenty of ambitions left to
fulfil; he’s keen on the idea of a
Scottish film studio, and has his
eye on a site under the Erskine
Bridge. “We so need one and
if we get one, the Scottish ad
industry and the Scottish film
industry will come together
and really begin to mean
something. More films will
be made or shoot in Scotland
for longer. More ads will stay
in Scotland. Scottish culture
will be greatly enhanced. The
Scottish crew talent base will
soar. It makes no sense at all
that Scotland doesn’t have one
studio when Manchester has
six.”
“There is less big budget
advertising work during this
recession,” says Mallinson, “but
there is definitely more work
around than there ever was.
When clients aren’t spending
hundreds of thousands on
media, they tend to spend less
on production.”
“Our focus is on doing great
work, and over the last two
decades, we’ve shown that
advertising can align itself
closely with the growth of the
film and television industry, and
digital offers new challenges on
top of that. Recession or not,
our development is hopefully
something that will continue
along the same lines. Whatever
happens it would be good to
be part of creating the same
sort of buzz in Scotland again
that kept me here in 1984, and
if anyone wants to help build a
film studio, you can usually get
me at the office.”
www.mtp.co.uk

made in scotlanD TV
Tim Maguire
Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Tim Maguire can lay claim
to being a true Renaissance man, a writer, director, producer
and voice-over artist who operates from an Edinburgh base.
A good example of how an individual can steer his own path
through the modern media, Maguire is only now starting up his
own production company Roll Titles, to make what he calls uncorporate
films.
“I stumbled into the industry in 1985 when Ken McGill asked me to
write a documentary on American Football in Scotland. We formed
a production company called Nobacker, because we had no money,
brought in Skyline’s Trevor Davies as Executive Producer, and over a
lunch with the Head of Sport at Channel 4, persuaded him to give us
seventy grand towards the budget,” says Maguire.
“I liked TV, but it took so long to get that project off the ground that
I drifted into directing corporate films to pay the rent. Then, in the
early 90’s I was making pitch films for the advertising agency Faulds
in Edinburgh, and every time I made a film, they won the pitch,
so they rashly offered me a job as their producer. I knew nothing
about producing, but in the two and a half years I worked there, the
agency won all the top awards for TV commercials in the UK and
Europe, so I think my ignorance was probably an asset.”
“I still believe that you’re
only as good as your last
piece of work, and that if
you do good work, good
work will find you.”
- Tim Maguire
Sound Recordist Robert Anderson
At Faulds, Maguire produced “Rediscover The Power of the
Spoken Word,” the multi award-winning campaign for BBC Radio
Scotland that made an innovative use of typography to convey their
message. Since then, Maguire has created ads for an impressive
list of clients including Visit Scotland, Prada, Scottish Screen and
Coca-Cola.
“I’m particularly happy with the work I did for Visit Scotland
through Hamish Barbour of IWC. That was a dream job, as I love
this country, and enjoyed capturing the different sides of it on film,”
says Maguire. “I was delighted when the client told me that our
campaign was the most successful they’ve ever made – so much
so that they keep re-cutting it to incorporate material we shot three
years ago!”
Maguire is modest about his own success and says his awkward
early forays into TV presenting for the BBC helped him as a director.
He now takes great pains when working with his mostly nonprofessional
casts to make them comfortable and relaxed in front
of the camera. And whether it’s shooting at the Rock Ness festival
or filming commercials in the Seychelles, Maguire is proving that
even in difficult times, there are opportunities for the agile and
imaginative.
Tim Maguire
Tim Maguirewith Scott Rodger
“I hate the word ‘corporate’; it sounds bland and soulless, and even
when I began making ‘corporate films’, I knew that wasn’t how they
should be. So Roll Titles will make ‘un-corporate films’ that will
inform, educate and entertain – now where have I heard that phrase
before?”
“Nobody does this for the money, although it’s nice when it comes
along. I’m in the business to do great work for whoever hires me,
whether as a writer, a director a producer or a narrator,” he says. “I
still believe that you’re only as good as your last piece of work, and
that if you do good work, good work will find you. It may have been
an accidental career, but I’m delighted to have it!”’
photographs - credit Paul Herley
50

made in scotlanD TV
Hammerhead Facilities
Jean-Luc Godard once said: “All you
need to make a film is a girl and a gun.”
It’s also advisable to have a camera
and sound equipment! Hammerhead
Facilities is one of the UK’s leading
names in equipment hire with branches
in Edinburgh and Glasgow to ensure
that Scotland’s production companies
are kept up to date in terms of the latest
equipment and technologies and to
make the transition to HD and tapeless
formats just that bit easier.
“Hammerhead has embraced the arrival
of HD and in particular, the new tapeless
workflow formats. Our clients welcome
the opportunities we provide through
our open days and in daily practice, to
learn more about the new cameras and
workflow systems,” says Hammerhead
Operations Manager, Phil Mews.
“Some clients have been hesitant about
making the move to tapeless. The open
days are the perfect opportunity for
them to air their concerns, and for us
to provide reassurance and explain the
benefits of adopting the new technology.
Although clients are welcome to call
in at any time to discuss bookings
and equipment, our open days give
them a chance to meet other people
in the industry and catch up with old
acquaintances. There’s a real networking
buzz at these events,” explains Mews.
Hammerhead can point to recent
productions like School Musical 2 for
Mentorn Scotland, or Warship 2 for ITV/
SKY as illustrations of how the new
format can work. For those involved
in the technicalities, the process can
involve learning new skills and changing
work practices, but it’s all part of the
business for Hammerhead.
In addition to the Scottish client base,
during 2008 Hammerhead saw a sharp
increase in production companies from
outside Scotland using their facilities
and has seen these figures continue to
rise during 2009, despite the current
economic climate.
Phil Mews: “Production Managers are
finding themselves having to work
within the constraints of tighter budgets,
but still needing to use locations around
the UK. By using Hammerhead, with
its branches in Manchester, Glasgow,
Edinburgh and London, they can hire
kit locally where they are shooting and
using local crew with experience of
working on network programmes.
Mews says, “Having worked on major
network productions in London for
many years, I have seen first hand
the reluctance of many production
companies to use local crews and kit
for shoots outside London, unsure
that their skills will match those in
the capital. Here at Hammerhead, we
have successfully been changing that
perception by providing top quality
camera kits and skilled crews that have
major network credits, to high profile
productions such as Comic Relief,
Homes Under The Hammer, Tonight
with Trevor MacDonald and the recent
BBC series Rivers with Gryff Rhys-Jones.
These productions have maintained
their high standards whilst managing to
make good savings by not paying large
travel and accommodation costs for
London-based crew.’’
This view is echoed by Jenny Jarvis, a
London-based Production Manager:
“Using Scotland-based crew and kit
from Hammerhead saved me cash,
enabling us to spend more money on
screen.”
Last year, London-based production
company Dragonfly chose Hammerhead
to supply kit for the third series of the
BBC3 show Kill It, Cook It, Eat It, filmed
entirely on location in Scotland, the
series was shot on Digital Betacam with
additional material from Sony HVR-Z1’s,
using local crew, again supplied by
Hammerhead.
Having teams in Edinburgh and
Glasgow, in addition to London and
Manchester ensures that Hammerhead
is well placed to meet its client’s location
shoot needs, no matter where they are
in the UK.
www.hammerheadtv.com
51

made in scotlanD TV
4IP
For over two decades, Channel 4 has made a
name for itself as a creative and innovative
broadcaster, producing programming
that challenges viewers, offering fresh
perspectives that reflect our diverse society. But to
stay relevant in a fully digital world Channel 4 needs
to extend its values across multiple platforms and
in 2008 it formed its new 4 Innovation for the Public
Fund, or ‘4iP’, an investment fund set up to help
support public service content in digital media. This
bold and exciting partnership aims to invest up to
£50 million in publicly valuable digital content and
services over the next two years based throughout
the UK.
“As part of its 2008 Next On 4 strategy, Channel
4 made the decision to invest in a new breed of
independent company,” says Ewan McIntosh, Digital
Commissioner for Scotland, Northern Ireland and
The North East. “We’re matching that in Scotland
with support from public funders too: Scottish
Screen and Scottish Enterprise. We take ideas in all
the time through our online submissions system
(http://submit.4iP.org.uk) and invest in the ideas
which share the channel’s values of doing things
first, inspiring change in the lives of people in
Britain and making trouble.”
“For example, we’re working with a company called
Digital Goldfish in Dundee, who are creating an
animated iPhone game which raises the awareness
in young people about what abusing alcohol can do
to their bodies. It’s a subversive, funny, important,
educational project. The iPhone app store is a hard
market to tap into, but one where there’s a lot of
interest right now.”
4iP will hold a fresh series of briefing events across
the UK this year, and McIntosh points out that
the fund has increased the number of projects in
which it’s investing, from 3% earlier this year to
5% of projects submitted now;
the chances have never been
higher for getting an investment
in your idea from the fund.
“We’re exploring new ways of
investing, new ways of making
revenues in an online world.
When you’re making a television
show, for example, the spend is
made on the broadcast itself with
revenue made through adverts
and sponsorship. Working online
is different, we’re generally
not making stuff for C4.com,
with projects normally hosted
elsewhere, like on an application
store or a new website,” says
McIntosh. “We’re therefore
looking at hugely varying models
for the independent company
to generate revenues and keep
the service, site or application
alive. We don’t want companies
to think they deliver an idea then
walk away. To me, the point at
which the idea is delivered is
the point where the work of 4iP
really begins. We provide ongoing
support to the projects for some
time, and make sure that they find
their place in a busy new media
landscape.”
However, McIntosh stresses
that 4iP shouldn’t be seen as
a benevolent fund purely just
interested in innovation.
“We want 4iP projects to be
powerful new ways of delivering
public value, but we also
need some of our ideas to be
commercial propositions. We
can’t fund projects in perpetuity
and there may come a point with
some of our projects that we
have to leave the idea to wither,
knowing this may leave the
company with something they
can’t maintain. We’re seeking an
entrepreneurial attitude, whether
that’s a long-standing independent
company or agency, or a one-man
company that only just started
up.”
Other projects getting 4iP support
include FestBuzz.com, a service
which crowdsources the public’s
opinions of Edinburgh Festival
shows rather than relying on
the reviews of newspaper and
magazine critics, showing the
differences between what the
public and the professional
reviewers think.
“I’m interested solely in the
quality of ideas, services or
platforms which people will love
using or will genuinely change
people’s lives. Sometimes people
will say that they ‘don’t know what
4iP is looking for,’ but I reckon the
real challenge is understanding
what new media with a public
service goal looks like. Ultimately,
a lot comes down to the passion
of people making these ideas
become reality, and finding
effective ways of measuring the
impact of a project. Often, figures
52

made in scotlanD TV
Festbuzz.com
about the number of people who visit
a website, or how long they spend
there end up being used to massage
the egos of the web service’s creators,”
says McIntosh. ”With something like
Central Station, a platform for emerging
and established artists to share their
work and learn from each other (www.
thisiscentralstation.com), the real
question will be what difference it makes
in terms of bringing new artists to the
digital world, and that can’t be assessed
in three weeks or even three months.
It’s a gamble, but then again, almost
every successful project starts with an
individual company taking a risk, and
4iP is keen to support them when they
do so.”
www.4ip.org.uk
Ewan McIntosh
53

made in scotlanD TV
Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Museum being set up for The 39 Steps shoot
Half Moon Investigations
Locations
Whether it’s Kelvingrove Museum
featuring in the latest remake of John
Buchan’s The 39 Steps, a tent-pole of
the BBC’s Christmas TV line-up, or The
Firth of Forth’s Bass Rock being used
in the new MJZ commercial for LG
televisions, Scotland’s locations have
been used in a variety of inventive ways
this year. Scottish Screen’s Locations
Department has been working hard to
match the varied demands from film,
television and commercial makers.
“The most interesting television
programmes we’ve been involved with
in 2009 are those large-scale projects
with the potential to employ a number
of local crew and where we have been
able to find spaces to match their
needs. Waybaloo, a groundbreaking
CBeebies television programme with a
lot of specific technical requirements,
was a real success story because we
found RDF Media a massive warehouse
space where they could construct an
entire forest. For another BBC children’s
programme, Half Moon Investigations,
we found an empty school in Bellshill,
North Lanarkshire, an area of the
country where they don’t get an awful
lot of filming,” says Scottish Screen’s
Locations Department Manager Belle
Doyle.
“We were also pleased that The 39
Steps chose to shoot here as the BBC
was initially looking to film in Canada,
and needed a fair amount of persuading
to come here,” she says. “The best bit
about doing this job is managing to get
productions here when they might be
sceptical that Scotland could work for
them as a location, and when they get
here, they realise just how good and
experienced the local crews are, as well
as the variety and quality of locations
available.”
There’s no argument about the quality
of the locations or crews in Scotland,
but Doyle recognises that in the current
recession, Scottish Screen’s locations
department has to be competitively
minded to ensure that productions
continue to use Scotland as a location.
“Right now, there are more
commercials and photo-shoots
around, so I think in a minor way the
recession is working for us because ad
agencies can’t afford to go abroad right
now. And the Scottish Government has
been using Scottish-based companies
for Government television advertising
and that’s helped keep the work here,”
says Doyle. “But we do rely on major
broadcasters making full use of the
local Scottish crew and facilities
companies, rather than bringing up sets
constructed in Manchester, or bringing
up crew from London. It’s important
for us to concentrate on bringing in
production that makes the greatest
economic impact in Scotland, whatever
the financial conditions.”
Major broadcasters and indie
programme makers are all facing
the same dilemma of budgets being
squeezed, but this should not be an
excuse to reduce the quality of the
work being produced. Doyle sees the
business of persuading them to shoot in
Scotland as a challenge, but one which
Scottish Screen Locations is ready to
take on.
“We know that it’s cheaper and easier
logistically to shoot in Glasgow rather
than London and with current budgets
being what they are, all production
companies are looking for a way to
reduce their costs. We know that good
54

made in scotlanD TV
The Scottish Stand in Cannes
The 39 Steps
“We know that good
locations add value to a
production.”- Belle Doyle
locations add value to a production.
We are happy to help with all kinds of
location requests, and we’ll even cover
the costs of producers wanting to come
and have a look for themselves”, she
says, “We have a recce fund to help
productions make a decision on where
they should shoot and it’s available to
help all productions, whether feature
film or television, as long as the
production will employ local crew and
spend money in Scotland.“
Other work for the locations department
includes a new locations brochure for
Scotland that was distributed at the
Locations Trade Show in California, the
Cannes Film Festival and the Edinburgh
International Film Festival, and working
with the network of film location offices
across Scotland to develop a proactive,
professional service across the entire
country. “It’s a challenging time for
everyone in the industry”, she says,
”but we are looking to the future,
continuing to promote Scotland as a
place where successful long-running
TV series have been made, and we
have every confidence that we can
continue to make world-class television
here. It’s important for our industry and
for the economy that we consolidate
our position in both domestic and
international markets.”
www.scottishscreenlocations.com
55

made in scotlanD TV
Whiteout
It’s snow joke when you need 40 tonnes of the white stuff to make a location
look like the dead of winter, particularly when you’re shooting at the start of
summer. Stephen Burt is one of Scotland’s leading location managers, having
worked on features like Young Adam and television drama like Looking After Jo
Jo, so when you need to make the near impossible a reality, he’s got years of
experience to fall back on. When the producers of Whiteout, a German-Italian coproduction
shooting in Scotland wanted to create the illusion of a house snowed
in and cut off by the elements, Burt managed to work his magic with the help of
effects experts Artem.
“I’d come up the grip route initially; the first feature I worked on was as a driver
on Breaking the Waves. I’d fallen into scouting locations quite naturally, and
got to be part of a reliable team of people that I could trust, including producer
Suzanne Reid, who contacted me for Whiteout,” says Burt. “It’s based on a novel
by thriller writer Ken Follett, and it’s a heist/hostage drama in which kidnappers
get trapped in a remote house with a stolen deadly virus. The family of the
scientist who developed the virus is taken hostage, and fights back, but we had
to create the illusion that they were trapped by the snow, and couldn’t leave the
house. That takes a lot of organisation, and you have to get the continuity just
right to make the idea work.”
Years ago, Stanley Kubrick famously covered the locations of The Shining with
salt to create the right look, but there are now practical and environmental
reasons why burying your location in salt is not a viable option. For Whiteout,
Burt had to make sure that the location not only suited the project, but also it
could be left in an acceptable state afterwards.
“Ed Smith, who helped persuade the producers to come here, also found the main
locations such as Abbotsford House, which was Sir Walter Scott’s residence, and
we covered it with 40 tonnes of artificial snow, waist high, the cars completely
covered. It was a massive job, because you had to be able to hose everything
down afterwards. You couldn’t use salt because it kills the vegetation; you can’t
have a scorched earth policy in 2009. So we used a membrane, we sprayed
paper flakes from big guns, and for the backgrounds we used a dust called C90,
which is fertiliser based, and can be left for the rain to wash away. And for high
rooftops we used biodegradable foam.”
It sounds difficult, but with Artem’s help, Burt and his team were able to create a
perfect whiteout, much to the appreciation of their international crew.
“Whiteout will go out as a Christmas special in Germany but was shot in spring
and early summer. How the snow is used is very important to the director of
photography and the technicians, but I have to say, everyone got on tremendously
well, even the sparks were invited to go over to Germany for the interior shoot,”
says Burt. “We do lots of great work in this country, from Volvo commercials to
features, and Whiteout proves that if you need a big location special effect, Dr
Zhivago style, we’re more than up to the job.”
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made in scotlanD TV
“We do lots of great work in this
country, from Volvo commercials to
features, and Whiteout proves that
if you need a big location special
effect, Dr Zhivago style, we’re more
than up to the job.” - Stephen Burt
Capricorn Films/Constantin Film GmbH - photos Graeme Hunter
57

made in scotlanD TV
Jamie Oliver with Sharon Osbourne
David Simon
“We’ve definitely tried to reflect the current economic
situation, while still ensuring we provide a festival that is
fun, inspirational, and motivating.” - Amy Brown
Gok Wan doing a special TV Festival version of How to Look Naked
58

MEDIA GUARDIAN
Edinburgh
International
Television Festival
FESTIVAL DIRECTOR
Amy Brown
made in scotlanD TV
Since 1976 each August bank
holiday has seen Edinburgh
become the focus of the
television industry with
famous speakers ranging from Dennis
Potter to Sir Rupert Murdoch.
Taking place this year from 28-30
August, the line-up is just as inspiring,
with guests including David Simon,
the mastermind behind The Wire, and
Ant and Dec, the masterminds behind
Wonky Donkey.
“This year we’ve tried to ensure
Edinburgh offers even better value for
delegates, by offering free development
and business advice clinics,” says
Festival Director Amy Brown. “We’re
also reflecting the concerns of the
industry through key debates and
speakers – the BBC Business Editor
Robert Peston will deliver his thoughts
on the media industry in the Richard
Dunn Memorial Lecture, RTL Group’s
CEO Gerhard Zeiler will be giving his
take on the international industry in
the Worldview Address, and of course
James Murdoch’s keynote MacTaggart
Lecture on the opening night will
discuss the changing media landscape.”
2009 has already seen intense scrutiny
on how much top television stars and
management are paid, with questions
asked about the various ways in which
broadcasters are funded. The MGEITF
is planning to tackle the issue head-on
with sessions covering all the relevant
issues.
“We’ve definitely tried to reflect the
current economic situation, while still
ensuring we provide a festival that
is fun, inspirational, and motivating.
In additional to the high profile
speakers and debates, we have made
sure the programme offers plenty of
opportunities to get added value from
the festival,” says Brown. “In terms of
sessions specifically about financial
issues, we’ve got To Pay or Not to
Pay, PSB: The Insider’s Guide plus
BBC’s Vision Director Jana Bennett,
ITV’s Director of Television Peter
Fincham, Channel 4’s Chief Executive
Andy Duncan and FIVE’s Chief Dawn
Airey who will be discussing how the
industry is funded and how top talent
and execs are paid.”
While the success of viral videos such
as Susan Boyle’s performance on
Britain’s Got Talent has undoubtedly
changed thinking in the TV industry,
it’s also notable that the TV show
itself attracted record viewing figures,
showing that digital media often finds
itself serving the more traditional
outlets like television. The MGEITF
aims to reflect the shifting nature of
the modern media landscape, by not
allowing change to go unquestioned
and unchallenged.
“The festival has almost 150 speakers
over three days, so we try to maintain
a balance between on and off screen
talent, serious debate, inspirational
masterclasses and fun sessions which
remind us all of the power of TV to
entertain,” says Brown.
“With sessions such as The Emperors
New Media Clothes and How to
Make Money Online, as well as some
interesting research from Deloitte, the
festival explores how audiences are
behaving online, and what this means
for programme makers, advertisers and
broadcasters. As Jamie Oliver said at
last year’s festival, TV is still the boss,
but new technology offers lessons
and opportunities and the festival will
explore these.”
While interactivity may be one of the
modern-media buzz-words, there’s
nothing more interactive than actually
taking part in festival events, with top
talent involved in a variety of formal,
and sometimes informal discussions.
“We have the usual pitching sessions
and masterclasses, but we’ve also
added development clinics and
business advice centres to allow
delegates to sharpen their pitching
skills, learn how to market their ideas,
and even get some financial advice,”
says Brown. “And it wouldn’t be the
Edinburgh Television Festival if we
didn’t have a range of social events
allowing plenty of opportunities to
network and interact.”
“Not many people know this but the
festival is a charity and we run two
schemes that help people get in and
get on in television. So while much of
the industry is in the EICC, across town
at Napier University, 150 young people
will be getting their first insight into the
industry through The Network – a free
five day programme with workshops
and masterclasses from Sky News,
The Wire creator David Simon, and
many of the UK’s top TV execs,” adds
Brown. “This is what the festival does
best – taking advantage of the amazing
people who attend the festival, and
getting them to spend a little bit of time
mentoring the next generation of TV
talent.”
Preparing the 2009 event hasn’t left
Brown with much opportunity to plan
her recuperation once the weekend
event is over, but she’s relying on the
intoxicating balm of motherhood to
chill her out.
“I know I should be planning a holiday
but I haven’t got around to it yet!“ she
says. “I think I’ll just spend a bit more
time with my new baby. A baby’s smile
does seem to soothe most worries!”
www.mgeitf.co.uk
59

samd
“You want fame? Well fame costs. And right here
is where you start paying.”
Alan Parker’s Fame-d portrait of life at a
performing academy may well be the cliché of
any dramatic arts course, but Adam McIlwaine,
Head of Production Technology at the Royal
Scottish Academy of Music and Drama outlines
a much more practical and industry oriented
strategy when talking about the course he
oversees.
While he’s chatting about the Academy’s
expanded, three-year Digital Film and Television
course, a gaggle of teenagers in leotards
and legwarmers spills into the cafeteria. It’s a
misleading intervention; McIlwaine’s description
of how the Academy’s role nurturing talent for
music and drama makes it a natural place for
film and television is far more grounded in the
realities of helping students find their way in the
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made in scotlanD TV
“It’s not rocket science, just working out how best to
equip young people to find the job they want in the
TV and film industries.” - Adam Mcllwaine
business of film and television.
”What we have here is a film and
television programme, which is about
bringing theatre and film arts together;
from working in the industry, it’s become
obvious to me that a lot of people who
are now working as AD’s or producers
actually came though the theatrical
route,” he says. “So we’re opening up
students to the idea that building a set
for a stage production might help them
to explore how these skills could be
used in other disciplines, since it’s hard
to make a living doing, say, props for
film, exclusively.”
The Digital Film and Television course
has two full time members of staff.
McIlwaine heads up the production
technology department, and ex-film
journalist Andy Dougan does the film
theory. Their expertise is supported by
a number of industry professionals,
who are brought in to make sure that
students have a firm grounding in their
chosen disciplines.
“For example, we found that no one was
really training up AD’s, yet at RSAMD
we have stage-management students
who can adapt to that. And we have
the resources; it’s important to keep
up to date and we’re the first Scottish
institution to have our graduation
students shooting on RED HD cameras,”
says McIlwaine. “The guys who come
out of the camera department have RED
training, which sets them up well for life
once the course is finished. We don’t
send out directors; they’re sent out as
runners or sometimes as trainees, but
always as creatives. If they want to be
directors, that’s fine, we wouldn’t try to
disabuse them of that notion, but we
impress on them that directing may be
years down the line.”
With 12 students in each year in the
Digital Film and Television Department,
the RSAMD is well-placed to cater for
the highly individualised needs of future
industry professionals, while at the
same time ensuring they understand the
wider context of their work.
“It’s broad brush-stokes in the first year.
In the second year they’re looking more
at why they’re shooting in particular
ways: looking at framing, getting them
to analyse the craft, while all the time
keeping them in the habit of writing. It’s
important that they can express their
ideas; we’re big believers in the notion
that the idea is king,” McIlwaine says. “A
sound recordist should know how the
commissioning process works, so when
he’s on set, he’ll understand the work
that’s gone in to getting the script to that
point. During the second year they’ll
choose specialist departments, and in
third year they get to experience focus
pulling, grip-work, and so on. Even if
they only start out as a runner, it’s a big
advantage if they’ve got other skills at
the ready to help them move on up the
ladder.”
To ensure that the studies the students
undertake are practical rather than
purely academic, McIlwaine is
responsible for bringing in some of the
industry’s top creative names to spend
time with the students.
“We’ve had Gaynor Holmes and Sara
Harkins developing ideas with them;
we’ve also had ex Head of Drama at
BBC Scotland, Barbara McKissack and
Kim Miller, ex-Coronation Street and
now of River City on the TV side, and
Andrea Calderwood on the film and
TV mini-series side, all big supporters
of the course. We want the students
to generate ideas with them, so that
they learn to create relationships with
broadcasters, helping to plant the seed
of ideas for things that might well
become a reality in a few years’ time.”
“We want the students to speak the
right lingo and to learn by example
from them; the grammar they might
be studying is transferable from one
discipline to another, many of the rules
are the same. We need new ideas to be
able to come through from seed and
will only do this by working with good,
exciting, talented programme makers
who understand the shifting television
landscape of the 21st century. Develop
relationships and ideas over a long
period of time, not just the duration of
your course of study. Content creation
is vital to a vibrant future industry and
the new ideas will come from the next
generation of talent, some of which will
come through RSAMD.”
As the cafeteria clears of students,
McIlwaine reflects on the journey that
lies ahead for those on the Digital Film
and Television course, and on some of
the illustrious names from the past.
“You have to manage expectations;
when you’ve got names like David
Tennant or James McAvoy graduating
RSAMD, there’s obviously a sense of
excitement among the students about
the possibilities that lie ahead, but we’re
keen to keep them grounded,” he says.
“Ultimately, we’re equipping them with
the skills that might help them scale
the heights; I designed the course to be
the one I wanted to take when I was a
teenager, but which didn’t exist at the
time. It’s not rocket science, just working
out how best to equip young people to
find the job they want in the TV and film
industries.”
www.rsamd.ac.uk
Photos by Ken Dundas

made in scotlanD TV
Celtic Media FestivaL
Promoting the languages and
cultures of Celtic countries on
screen and in broadcasting,
the Celtic Media Festival is
known for its expansive reach in
bringing together a cross-section of
talent for screenings, conferences,
masterclasses and even ceilidh
dancing. After the dust has settled on
this March’s festivities in Caernarfon,
Festival Producer Jude MacLaverty
and Festival Co-ordinator Jo Stein
are already making plans for the 2010
event, this time in Newry in Northern
Ireland.
“The 2010 festival will be a very
focussed two day event, and we’re
delighted to be going to Newry;
there’s a huge amount of exciting
co-production going on in Northern
Ireland right now, and because
Newry’s a border town it also allows
us to reach across to the Southern
Irish, as well as bringing in talent
from all the Celtic countries,” says
MacLaverty. “As always, we will invite
local luminaries like Adrian Dunbar,
Susan Lynch and James Nesbitt whilst
also showcasing the diverse work
being produced by Northern Irish
indies and broadcasters, drama being
a particularly strong theme this year. I
think that more and more the Celts are
looking to each other for inspiration
and co-production opportunities.”
The Celtic Media Festival is by no
means limited to one slot in the
calendar year, with MacLaverty taking
the festival brand to events like
Go North in Inverness, or curating
programmes of award-winning films
from the Celtic Media Festival to create
screening packages for worldwide
showings. And there’s also overseeing
the festival’s annual competition,
which attracts over 400 entries every
year from Ireland, Northern Ireland,
Scotland, Cornwall, Brittany, Wales
and beyond. But the central focus is
the annual festival, which has been
“Because we have the festival in a different
place every time, it’s never the same and
that keeps it interesting.”
- Jude MacLaverty
building a reputation over decades
for attracting top talent to informal
settings.
“It’s quite a celebratory thing; we try
to make it as warm and sociable as
possible and because we have it in a
different place every time, it’s never
the same and that keeps it interesting,”
says MacLaverty. “It’s a great place
to forge new partnerships and for
media professionals to strengthen the
business side of things,” adds Stein.
“It’s sometimes challenging getting
people in and out in a day, some want
just to do their session and retire,
while others want to hang out and
chat. We also make an effort to involve
people locally, setting up a committee
in the town well in advance, and
bringing in local businesses and
students as part of our industry
events.”
Any media festival requires constant
readjustment to keep up with changing
times, economically and creatively,
and Stein and MacLaverty are keen to
point to recent innovations made to
ensure that the Celtic Media Festival
keeps up.
“We introduced a student strand
in Skye three years ago which has
grown to become almost a mini
festival in itself called GreenLight,
which is sponsored by Creative Loop
and produced in partnership with
Highlands and Island Enterprise,
complete with a student award
system,” says Stein. “This year, we
worked with the Royal Television
Society, taking their winning entries
from the Celtic regional student award
shortlists and awarding a Celtic Torc
in three categories. It is a successful
partnership with the students getting
another showcase for their work as
well as the RTS competition being
highlighted in colleges, universities
and courses across the Celtic nations
and regions.“
“We did a session on gamers for the
first time, bringing in Real Time Worlds
to show how Dundee has made itself a
centre of excellence; an example that
places like Bangor in North Wales are
very keen to imitate,” says MacLaverty.
“It’s also key to highlight the new
wave of production in Scotland during
the first year of BBC ALBA being on
the air; not everyone working on
production for the channel are Gaelic
speakers, but it’s a very inclusive
enterprise with a lot of Scottish cast
and crew in work during this difficult
economic time. We had a packed
auditorium in Caernarfon with our
ALBA Has Arrived session despite it
being billed against a big festival draw,
documentary-maker Jon Ronson.”
And as the countdown begins to
the 2010 event in Northern Ireland,
MacLaverty and Stein are already
working to make sure that next year’s
programme maintains their track
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made in scotlanD TV
record for staging memorable events.
“It’s great to look back on special
festival moments like Seachd: the
Inaccessible Pinnacle premiere in
Skye, which we could have sold out
three times over; or the final night
ceilidh we held in Portree village
hall with Tessa Jowell kicking off her
shoes on the dance floor; having a
conversation with Ken Loach over
the sound of Cornish drumming; or
even getting a smile from Stephen
Rea in Galway, a rare event!” adds
MacLaverty. “It’s a great mix, and
when you see someone of the stature
of Seamus Heaney sneaking in at the
back to watch Tom Paulin and panel
discuss the Ulster Scots language,
you can see there is great value and
originality in what the festival has to
offer.”
Last Choir Standing
www.celticfilm.co.uk
Lucy Owen
63

made in scotlanD TV
I’m in Away From Here, Edinburgh Skillset Screen and Media Academy
Skillset and
Digital Britain
Skillset is the Sector Skills Council for creative
media; that is the TV, film, radio, interactive media,
animation, computer games, facilities, photo
imaging and publishing sectors. It is the industry body
that supports skills and training for people and businesses
to ensure the UK creative media industries maintain their
world class position. One piece of work Skillset recently
contributed to, which will have profound repercussions for
the industry, was Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report.
Alasdair Smith, Skillset’s Director in Scotland said, “The
report looked at the increasing role digital technology plays
in the UK economy, and Skillset was asked to input on skills
issues. The reality of Digital Britain is that almost everyone
will need to upgrade their skills. Industry professionals
may find they can no longer just be specialists, but must
aim for a broader range of professional digital skills.
That’s important to recognise if we’re going to equip our
workforce for the future.”
“Digital Britain is relevant to the creative media workforce
whatever stage they are at, from students in their final
year of school making course choices through to seasoned
professionals,” says Smith. “The key though is making
education and training more relevant to industry and so
we’ve established the network of Skillset Screen and Media
Academies. These centres of excellence are assessed by
industry practitioners and deliver amongst the best media
training anywhere in the UK. In Scotland we have four
Academies delivering a range of HNC/D, undergraduate,
postgraduate and short-course provision.“
These Skillset Academies are also encouraging people to
think more about the new digital platforms, recognising
the convergence of modern media, though this isn’t
happening just in Scotland, but round the world; there are
new challenges in how creative content can be exploited and
everyone working in the media should be thinking about what
new skills are required to do this successfully.
“Skillset’s unique focus on helping to develop a workforce
better equipped than ever to take advantage of emerging
digital opportunities will hopefully help to grow the sector;
after all, a company is defined by the people that work for it,”
says Smith.
With grant aid from Scottish Screen, Skillset also helps the
workforce through Skillset Careers, the dedicated industry
careers advice service, and also the Skillset Scotland Training
Fund, which provides bursaries for professional development:
offering up to 80% of the fees, travel and subsistence, to a
maximum of £800 for freelancers, or up to 50% and a maximum
of £500 for employees. A very practical kind of help.
And Smith confirms, “There is increased commitment to
Scotland in terms of the media right now, which will have
a marked effect on the output of the indie sector, so for the
creative industries, there’s a new challenge for all of us. And
it’s important that we all work together to ensure successful
collaborations in the future.”
The Skillset Academies in Scotland are: Edinburgh Skillset
Screen and Media Academy; University of Abertay Skillset
Media Academy; Creative Loop Skillset Media Academy.To find
out about Skillset Scotland Training Bursaries call Sharon Hutt,
Scotland Coordinator on 0141 222 2633 or email sharonh@
skillset.org
www.skillset.org/careers
www.skillset.org/uk/scotland
64

made in scotlanD TV
30 years in the making
The New Entrants Programme
has been providing skills
development and real work
experience through on the job training
for those entering the screen industry
for over 30 years. NETS is a tiered
programme of development for anyone
wishing to work in the production,
technical, craft or design areas of the
industry. Funded by Scottish Screen
and Skillset, it’s a programme that’s
constantly evolving and adapting to
industry changes and working practice,
while tailoring the training to the needs
and requirements of the trainees on
each programme.
“We see it as a multilayered approach,”
says Kay Sheridan, NETS Manager.
“We have a one-year programme,
which is the definitive NETS course
for people new or recently entered to
the industry. We also have a 12-week
advanced version for those who are
at different stages of their careers
and require some extra specialist
skills to increase their creativity and
employability. It is important for
NETS to be very flexible in how it’s
structured. It must meet the industry’s
skills needs and so the different levels
of training available aims to provide
trainees at the appropriate level for
different productions.”
“To keep up with the changes, we make
sure we are continually consulting with
production companies and freelancers.
It is the industry expertise that shapes
and drives the programme and the
professionals who provide all the
training. We have to plan for the future
a well as the current requirements,
so we try to provide the skills for
trainees, that will meet the needs of
the business,” she says. “We also need
to ensure the trainees are keeping up
to date with current working issues
such as managing workflows and new
technologies. Our ongoing and future
developments for training in digital and
multi platform aspects of the industry
aims to ensure NETS remains, current,
relevant and industry led.
NETS also delivers a runners course
called Hit the Ground Running, a
one-day intensive course, designed
by Production Co-ordinator Linda
Fraser in response to the difficult task
productions may have in recruiting
good efficient runners at short notice.
To date, Hit the Ground Running
has been delivered in partnership
with Glasgow Film Office and with
Edinburgh Film Focus, although NETS
is keen to take this out on the road
around Scotland.
In 2009, NETS published Generation
NETS, a brochure detailing the career
paths of all of the entrants who have
come through the programme since its
inception in 1978. With over 119 trained
professionals to choose from, collecting
their achievements into one publication
was a substantial undertaking. Some
examples of NETS success stories
include, from earlier days, producers
Chris Young and Andrea Calderwood
and more recently Sajid Quayum Head
of Production at Caledonia Television
and Freelance Editor Alex Broad.
In addition both Sheridan and the
course co-ordinator, Mark Thomas also
provide the trainees with the support
and guidance they need to help them
succeed. “Our aim is to get trainees
as many valuable experiences and
contacts as possible so it will make
them as employable as possible by
the end of the course says Sheridan.
Having the right personal qualities and
skills are so important. Trainees need to
have strong people skills, the ability to
work under pressure in often stressful
conditions and the determination and
enthusiasm to pursue their careers in
the screen industries.”
A copy of the Generation NETS
brochure is available by contacting
kay.sheridan@scottishscreen.com.
www.scottishscreen.com/nets
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BAFTA Scotland
“I think it’s important
that we see BAFTA
not just as a onenight-a-year
organisation, but
something that has
important functions
for filmmakers all the
year round.”
- Helen Anderson
“I think it’s important that we see
BAFTA not just as a one-night-a-year
organisation, but something that has
important functions for filmmakers all the
year round,” says Helen Anderson, who
took over as Director of BAFTA Scotland
in 2008. “Yes, we trade off the value
of the mask, and the awards, but it’s
also about creating educational events,
sharing skills, getting new people into the
industry, and telling people about what’s
going on in it.”
While BAFTA’s UK awards have emerged
from the shadow of the Academy Awards
to attain a new prominence in an earlier
time-slot, BAFTA Scotland have not
only established their own awards in
November, but also their New Talent
awards, which take place annually in
March.
“The New Talent awards have been a
really positive step for us, featuring a
good cross-section of students, industry
practitioners and first time professionals.
We have a straight-to-the-point awards
ceremony, which lasts less than an hour;
we recognise the talent and then had a
great party to celebrate it afterwards,”
she says. “I think it’s appropriate for the
New Talent awards to be like that, in that
they’re in contrast with the more formal
Scottish BAFTA’s in November. It’s about
finding the best way to cater for the
constituency. For students, the awards
are an introduction to the industry,
so we’re uniquely placed to provide
connectivity and opportunities for
filmmakers to interact with each other,
and the established industry.”
Winning films like Dave and Claire
MacLeod’s Echo Wall, which uses cutting
edge digital cameras to capture the
drama of rock-climbing, illustrate the
changing opportunities which lie ahead
for Scottish filmmakers, young and
old, and Anderson believes that BAFTA
Scotland can play a vital role in bringing
the industry together.
“New technology means that its easier
than ever to make films outside the
Glasgow-Edinburgh axis, whether in Uist
or the Borders,” she says. “We have to be
ahead of the curve, with the categories of
the awards; 20% of the gaming industry
is in Scotland, and the crossover between
games and cinema is growing.”
With weekly screenings in Glasgow
and Edinburgh, BAFTA Scotland has a
strong and established social function
for its members. But the organisation
is also looking into other ways to bring
filmmakers together and celebrate
excellence in the industry.
“We’re a charity, and I believe that to
reflect that, we could do more to get the
mask to move, to talk about what goes
on. And with digital cinemas installed
in most Scottish regions, we’re hoping
to take our shows of new talent on the
road and reach audiences outside of just
Glasgow and Edinburgh,” says Anderson.
“I do want to shatter the perception that
BAFTA is just one night in the calendar;
this year we’ve already had successful
events in Edinburgh, Inverness and
Dundee and we have more activity
planned for the latter half of the year.”
And Anderson is particularly keen to
praise the spirit of the BAFTA members
that the organisation caters for.
“In any creative business, you might
expect people to be constantly on the
hustle, but what I see is that there’s
solidarity rather than competition. After
all, we all benefit from a rising tide,” says
Anderson. “We’re ideally placed to build
a bridge to help members to embrace
digital technologies; on one hand we’re
working with organisations like 4iP, and
on the other we have more traditional
film industry practitioners, who are
keen to find out more about digital
opportunities. Similarly, New Talent
members are quite often forming their
first work, and it’s ideal for them to talk to
people who have made a career from it.
That’s the kind of interaction we’re keen
to encourage.”
www.baftascotland.co.uk
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Ewan McIntosh
Donald Campbell
Amy Brown
Bill Paterson
Helen Anderson
Damien Smith
Garry Marshall
Greg McHugh
Belle Doyle
Alasdair Smith
Phil Mews
Ann McManus
Simon Donald
Paul Murray
Nick Hopkin
Craig Hunter
Katy Lander
Bryan Elsley
Sue Bourne
Gregory Burke
Ian Connell
Robert Florence
Jude McLaverty
Jo Stein
Rachel Boyd
Dawn Steele
thank you
Robbie Allen
Gavin Smith
Rob Christie
Hamish Barbour
Harry Bell
Kay Sheridan
Neville Kidd
Brian Limmond
Mary Morris
Peter McDougall
Adam McIlwaine
Kahl Henderson
Simon Mallinson
Leslie Hills
Stuart Cosgrove
Stephen Burt
Tim Maguire
Alan Tyler
Morag Fullarton
John Archer
Paul Gavin
Jim Brown
Marianna Marshall
Catherine Ross
Hilda McLean
Suzanne Vickers
Sharon Hutt
Lyndsey Fitzgerald
Heather Lafferty
Susie Miller
Sarah McWhinney
Katie Macleod
Lucy Fawcett
WRITTEN BY EDDIE HARRISON
EDITED BY CELIA STEVENSON
GRAPHIC DESIGN STEPHEN McEWAN
Digital Media
IP Fund
Created to address an identified
need for strategic intervention
in the digital media sector
in Scotland, the Digital Media IP
Fund forms part of a concerted
programme of investment designed
to maximise the creative, cultural and
commercial opportunities presented
by new and emerging technologies.
With potential benefits for creative
practitioners, creative businesses
and audiences alike, it’s a forwardlooking
intervention which seeks to put
Scotland’s creative businesses at the
forefront of the ‘digital revolution’.
With a substantial pot of £3m to
be invested over the next 2 years,
the fund offers the correct type
and level of financial assistance to
companies seeking to develop and
deliver innovative digital interactive
projects, and complements the
existing investment routes available
to companies through Scottish
Enterprise, one of the fund’s partners.
As a non-exclusive fund, Digital Media
IP Fund will work alongside a range of
co-investors from the private sector
to make sure the projects it supports
have every chance of success.
The future may be unpredictable
but what’s undeniable is the rapidly
changing way content is being created,
distributed and consumed as a result
of the technological advances in
distribution platforms and devices. The
Digital Media IP Fund has a specific
remit to support the projects that take
advantage of these extraordinary
advances, creating and distributing a
range of content that will find its place
in a growing market and ultimately
entertain, educate and inspire the end
user.
The Digital Media IP Fund is jointly
financed by Scottish Enterprise and the
Creative Scotland Innovation Fund.
www.scottishscreen.com/investment
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made in scotlanD TV
Scottish Screen 249 West George Street Glasgow G2 4QE
E: info @scottishscreen.com | W: www.scottishscreen.com | T: +44 (0)141 302 1700 | F: +44 (0)141 302 1711
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