I enjoy bringing spaces to life-adding colour and a story-be it for theatre, film, tv, magazines, a shop window, a commercial or a corporate video. Everyone has 'props' all around them in their daily lives-which tell us about their character and the era in which they live or lived.
After winning a place on TVYP 2000 at GEITF Edinburgh-I graduated from Warwick University in 2003 with a BA Hons English Lit & Theatre Studies. Ever since I have worked as an Art Director-starting off in theatre Stage Management in Edinburgh 2002 producing two comedy dramas with Fuse Productions. Filling the 'beer' bottles every night with squash and cutting out the plastic babies teeth-spawned my love affair with props.
I have a good bank of Make-up artists, Set builders, Costume Designers, Art Dept Assistants, Stills photographers and Runners on tap I have tried and tested-and are great-if you need a team. Or you can hire just me.
Recently I finished working in Wardrobe on London/Sadlers Wells Theatre run of 'Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake' where I was looking after the seven male Principal dancers-Richard Winsor, Jonathan Ollivier, Chris Marney, Dominic North, Scott Ambler, Steve Kirkham, and Sam Archer. A lovely jolly bunch and show. We recieved some nice thank-you cards & presents. I will miss the cast and crew. Thirteen quick changes per show, five shows over the weekend/eight a week.
'Ealing Comedy' was featured on the BBC News and screened at various cinemas around the UK and 'Macbeth's Disciples' was screened at The Soho Curzon twice-and by Director Of Photography Paul Wheeler at the 'Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival 2008' during his lecture. It received a large round of applause and loud cheers apparently-being a project to encourage children of the digital generation to take interest in literature and history through a Shakespearean cgi film and video game based on 'Macbeth'.
For the Mazda 6 online commercial I was sent alone to Granada, Spain to design, build and dress a bachelor pad set with initially no location to build it in, no internet in the hotel and no art dept cash, yet. So after location hunting with my translator/art dept assistant who was brilliant-we finally began. It was quite an adventure because the tiny village Guejar Sierra we were filming and living in had restaurants and shops open only on certain days-so sometimes I would go hungry! The hotel served no food after 9am rather strangely. Not even peanuts. As I do not speak a word of Spanish, when I was ill at one point I ended up playing charades with the chemist and drawing pictures to get the right medicine. My Spanish translator was not with me all the time. I would have taken a Spanish book but was given a days notice of the job and to pack and fly.
It was very cold as we were in the mountains-and the core crew were up there filming the Mazda 6 winding around icy roads-while the art department hunted for furniture and props in the town-and my set builders put down wooden floors and put up walls in the hotel basement. This was the only location we could find that had enough car parking space nearby for all the tech equipment trucks, ie. an enormous wasteland. Therefore we the art department had a cobwebby basement full of ancient farm fertiliser to work with. We had to clean the wooden floor about twenty times for the camera as the dust kept settling in a grey blanket. There was also no light down there-perfect when I have set builders in-so we had to borrow a generator and light from the gaffer, and the generator ran out of petrol every few hours-we were as I'm sure you have guessed by now-nowhere near a petrol station. I'm not sure rural Spain is the best place for a film shoot!
However I enjoyed it, it was a great crew and the 'Batman' stuntman performed in my bachelor set successfully: http://www.film38.com/#/Our-Work/
On my return from Hong Kong, I have six projects in the pipeline. A corporate video for Capgemini with Napoleon Creative, a kids tv stunt show which is in development and so secret, a theatre parodying facebook set, a Parisian stand up comedy set for a University friend and hopefully a BBC series & feature film of 'Macbeth's Disciples' a short I Art Directed & Costume Designed last year for Spearean Interactive Ltd. I am also planning, having attended The Cornwall Film Festival in Falmouth, to do some shoots by the sea where I have family and friends.
I am particularly keen to get involved with more period drama projects so please give me a call to discuss. I am London based-but available to travel. Please do not hesitate to contact me for more details.