Working for Television

Been a busy couple of weeks for me hence why I’m late with my blogging. Much of my time has been related with wedding photography and meetings and such like. But as I’m always talking about weddings, lol, I thought I’d tell you about something a little different. I’ve had a couple of meetings the past week with another television company looking to use me as photographic consultant. At this point things are very much still in the planning stage and I can’t tell you anything as I have been sworn to secrecy (and might not get paid if I do!!! lol) but I’ll tell you a bit about the last major television production I was involved with and you’ll get a glimpse of some of the things that go on behind the scenes as programs are being prepared.
ITV1 produced a program for mainstream television entitled Britain’s Favourite View. You may recall it, and you may even have voted in for the result. Basically, they divided the country up into about eight sections and showcased around half a dozen of the best viewpoints from each area, with the public then being encouraged to phone in and vote in order to find the most popular. For each viewpoint they had a well known celebrity who had connections with the area and presented their argument why their location should be given the viewers votes.
Scotland was divided up into two area’s. The Highlands and the Lowlands. At the time of the planning I was doing a lot of commercial and editorial work and ITV’s researchers spotted my name from my magazine articles and also the books A Photographers Guide to Scotland and In & Around Edinburgh, for which I’d done photography and also some writing. So, I was head hunted, lol, as consultant for the Lowlands program, although I ended up doing work on the Highland one too.
Now it sounds pretty glamorous when I say I’ve worked in television doesn’t it? lol. But most of my time I was sat around in hotels drinking coffee with the researchers and discussing locations and places for shoots. Not only did they want my views and opinions on the best vistas and panorama's, but more critically, once a viewpoint had been selected I had to provide the optimum time of day and the best vantage point for filming. This would be of great benefit to the film crew and assist in keeping the filming on schedule and under budget. So we spent a lot of time pouring over maps and street plans with me providing numerous diagrams and instructions.
A large chunk of the program was going to feature the comedian Rory Bremner who would be filmed walking and narrating primarily around Edinburgh. Again, not only did they need information regarding the most advantageous places I’d recommend filming the celebrity but also positions, timings and angles for when he would stop and speak into camera. This was one time where being a wedding photographer in Edinburgh was a great benefit as I frequently place people before many of the capitals striking backdrops, but you obviously can’t have them squinting into or being burnt out by hard sunlight. I also had to advise on tourist and public activity too as many folk when they see a TV camera suddenly get the urge to prance and dance around behind the presenter hoping to get into shot. Tourists even do this at weddings too believe it or not!
Once the programmers had everything in place I was given the boot and in came Sir Trevor MacDonald to host the series, followed a little later by Rory Bremner with the Edinburgh leg. It was quite interesting watching the program once it came onto television as the presenters made it all sound as if they’d personally discovered all the vista’s and information themselves! Oh, well. I guess that’s showbiz eh? lol. Anyway, I really enjoyed being involved and I’m looking forward to doing something similar again. Believe it or not, sometimes all this prep work is carried out and they end up deciding not to go ahead with the program after all. That can happen with magazine articles too. I’ve never had it occur at a wedding though, thank goodness!
The photos I’ve used here are some of the ones we used to illustrate aspects of the above program and also some recent shots from Melville Castle last week whilst I was there doing the photography for the scientist conference.

This afternoon I'm going round to see Julie and Allan (see the blog post below) who have just got back from honeymoon and we'll have a look through their wedding photos and chat about their album design. Then I’m off meeting with two couples planning their weddings this evening, one looking for an Edinburgh wedding photographer and the other getting married down in the Borders. Well, there’s a tenuous link to the Lowlands for you! lol