This page provides a handy summary of my skills and experience to date. Dig into this site’s other pages for more specific information re roles and individual projects.

EXPERIENCE: WHAT HAVE I DONE?

TUTORING

  • Since early 2023, I have been tutoring on the MA in Creative Business for Entrepreneurs & Executives at the National Film and Television School (NFTS).
  • Building upon my experience across multiple media, I have been lecturing and consulting on topics such as creative development, budgeting and scheduling across TV, games, apps, film and more.
  • Across my career I have sourced, mentored and grown new talent, hiring many people (both full-time and freelance) who were totally new to the industry in question.
  • I have been applying similar skills in my tutoring role.

TELEVISION PRODUCTION

  • I’ve worked full-time as a TV producer for around twenty years, with an additional decade or so freelancing within the industry.
  • Most of my TV experience has been in preschool animation, largely programmes for Channel 5’s Milkshake brand, although I’ve also produced several adult, teen and live action projects.
  • I’ve taken on producer roles on circa twenty broadcast series, in addition to working on hundreds of pilots and development projects – the latter now includes a plethora of factual/unscripted projects.
  • Full-time roles range from overall Series Producer, to one of a pair of Producers, to dedicated Audio Producer; often a combination of these, with Script Editor or Director duties on the side.
  • Full details are on the TV PRODUCTION page of this website. I’ve also produced and presented a couple of local history series on YouTube. See the ONLINE page for details.

AUDIO PRODUCTION

  • In 2001 it was decided at Impossible Television tha,t instead of using external audio facilities, we would bring all of our audio production in-house (with the exception of studio voiceover records).
  • I was given the task of taking over this side of things, in addition to all my other production management and script responsibilities.
  • I taught myself Pro Tools and various other audio programs, and for more than a decade I cut together the voice tracks (having overseen/directed their recording), adding music and SFX, and mix/mastering the final audio for around 500 individual episodes of broadcast TV animation.

SCRIPTWRITING

  • As of today I’ve written around 300 episodes of broadcast television, in addition to a hundred or more development scripts.
  • I’ve script edited closer to a thousand. The majority of my scripts have been for preschool animation series, but many have covered a whole range of other genres, from late night edgy comedy to a UK Film Council funded children’s movie script.
  • I’ve been responsible for the whole evolution of every script I’ve written, from coming up with the original storyline idea, through scene-by-scenes to draft and final scripts. You can find more information about some of these shows of this on the SCRIPT page of this site.

JOURNALISM

  • I started out as a magazine writer, penning various features for video games mag Amstrad Action whilst at University, before taking up a full-time job with them.
  • There, in addition to writing, I was responsible for flatplanning issues, originating features and series, commissioning writers, subbing copy, editing the letters page, chasing products for review, taking calls from readers, organising competitions and readers polls, negotiating with press officers, taking photos and screenshots, as well laying out some of the pages.
  • I’ve worked for three magazines full-time and have written for an additional 25+ (sports and lifestyle, as well as computing and video games) on a freelance basis. You can find details about some of these in the PRINT section of this site.

PUBLISHING/GRAPHIC DESIGN/PR

  • I’ve self-published a number of magazines over the years. These included several football fanzines (one of which was amongst the country’s best selling) whilst I was a student.
  • I edit, design and publish the world’s longest-running magazine about roller derby [a punky female-led contact sport on roller skates] which I launched in 2013 with 35+ issues to date.
  • In all cases I’ve been responsible for all aspects of the magazines, from flatplanning to writing copy, commissioning and subbing external copy, sourcing and negotiating with photographers, selling ad space, designing the magazine, print buying, organising the distribution, etc.
  • In the area of graphic design, I have also done this professionally for magazines (eg Sega Power in the 1990s) as well as for many local businesses and political campaigns in recent years.
  • The latter has included designing menus, adverts and gig posters, together with other PR work, for various pubs in Brighton, Lewes and beyond, as well as election/protest materials and more.

ONLINE/SOCIAL MEDIA/MARKETING

  • I’ve also run a number of websites and accompanying social media accounts.
  • Many of these have been for the sport of roller derby, for which I run fan clubs for the Brighton and Eastbourne leagues, as well as a national site.
  • You can find more information about these in the ONLINE section of this site.

SKILLS: WHAT CAN I OFFER?

EXPERIENCED PROJECT MANAGER

  • A key element of much of my work has been project management. I’m current in the process of taking my PRINCE2 exams to formalise this skillset.
  • In terms of television production, I would usually be the sole producer or part of a duo, working with between two and 20 full-time CG staff (plus a dozen or more freelancers), overseeing the entire pipeline for animated television programmes, usually to a week-per-episode schedule.
  • We developed our own in-house developed techniques to manage the workload.
  • Having since learnt Scrum/Agile, I can see that our methodologies – allocating points for complexity to each shot that needed animating, prioritising items based upon dependencies to ensure no downtime, adapting/adjusting in order to increase pace, etc – are 99% identical to those of formalised Scrum.

CREATIVE SELF STARTER

  • I have vast experience of originating and initiating projects off my own bat, in many cases pitching and negotiating directly with stakeholders (eg broadcasters) re the commissioning and budgeting of a project.
  • My creative experience covers a wide array of media – from television to print, audio to scripts, animation to graphic design – and genres.
  • This gives me the ability to view a project (its possibilities and limitations etc) from various different perspectives, in a manner difficult for someone from a more singular background.
  • The number of overall projects that I have seen through from origination to completion runs into many hundreds. Individual episodes/issues/campaigns run into the thousands.

CONSCIENTIOUS TEAM WORKER

  • I’ve worked for companies with one employee (myself) to those with several hundred.
  • Most of my experience is of working with a Scrum-sized in-house team of around ten (along with external writers and voice artists) that I work alongside, overseeing and acting as a facilitator for.
  • I’m very organised and dedicated to helping my co-workers overcome any issues and impediments they may face, whilst also efficiently managing my own workload.
  • It’s the case that on every TV series I have produced, we were achieving more in less time (often by a factor of two or three) by the end of production, having started out at a comparable speed to rival companies with four or five times our resources!

SEASONED NEGOTIATOR

  • Whether it’s negotiating a series budget with Channel 5, haggling a composer or celebrity’s agent down to a price they later won’t believe they agreed to, or sweet talking local education authorities re licencing child performers, I have vast experience of successful negotiation at various levels. Not just financially, but across issues like scheduling, productivity and inter-personal team and/or stakeholder conflict management issues.
  • I personally sourced and agreed rates with every out-of-house talent (musicians, scriptwriters, voiceover artists, etc) across more than fifteen years’ worth of ongoing TV series.
  • It goes without saying I have a very useful and sizeable contact book in areas such as these.

DEADLINE BEATER

  • Unlike some other industries, television and magazine production have hard and fast deadlines.
  • The broadcaster has scheduled the date episode one of your programme airs up to a year in advance. The printers have already booked in when they are printing your magazine to get it to the shops for the street date. There is no room for slippage.
  • Coming from this background, I’ve learned how to always hit (or deliver in advance of) a deadline, developing systems and routines, methods of streamlining, quality-sensitive shortcuts, and the production pace/rhythm and team interactivities required to complete the tasks at hand.
  • I’m used to working to several deadlines at once. For example, in an average week of production on a TV series, I might be simultaneously working on more than a dozen different episodes at various stages within the pre-, pro- and main production pipelines.
  • I also set aside time wherever practical for other projects and development work.

BUDGET SLICER

  • Much of my career has been spent at Impossible Television, a company whose USP was that we could produce animated series for far less than anyone else.
  • We sold programmes to people who thought they couldn’t afford animation.
  • Most preschool series shown on Channel 5 received 0-15% of the show’s required budget from the broadcaster, making up the rest from other broadcasters and toy companies etc.
  • Impossible made entire series for just that Channel 5 budget.
  • We produced/funded everything – the script, animation, audio, wages, overheads, facilities and production fee – often for the same price other companies would charge for just a script!
  • We did it not by cutting corners, but by working smarter, taking as much as we could in-house and developing faster ways to lipsync and rig characters, etc.
  • By way of example, I created an innovative new way to prepare scripts for voiceover recording that enabled us to record 200+ lines of dialogue per hour of studio and v/o artist time/cost. Most TV animation companies aim for around a quarter of that (50 lines an hour).
  • Every budget I oversaw was delivered substantially under. In the most extreme case, the script budget for Audrey & Friends came in £25,000 under its budget of £26,000 (ie only £1k spent).
  • I was recently approached by a new company that had been quoted £100,000 for a one minute CG short. I made them a four-minute 2D/3D short for £20k (including celebrity voices, an Oscar winning composer and more) that would win a 2024 Best World Animation award (see below).
  • I can always find ways to save both time and money on a project.

AWARD WINNER

  • Producer/Director of Do Not Resuscitate, global festival (and public vote) AniMate Online’s 2024 Best World Animation.
  • Scriptwriter on 123 Number Squad, Broadcast Awards 2024 Best Preschool Series.
  • Shortlisted for the 2000 Best Children’s Entertainment Series BAFTA (losing to Ant & Dec).

SOFTWARE: WHAT DO I USE?

PRO TOOLS, AUDITION & OTHER AUDIO SOFTWARE

  • I have decades of experience of editing, layering and mixing audio for television.
  • I’ve primarily use Pro Tools at every stage of the process (selecting and compiling voiceover takes, adding music, atmos and SFX, then mixing final levels) but now utilise Audition too.
  • I’ve produced the audio/sound design for around fifteen series (500 episodes).

PREMIERE PRO & AFTER EFFECTS

  • I also have substantial experience of video editing, primarily using Premiere Pro, across both CG and live action series, alongside some After Effects work.

INDESIGN, PHOTOSHOP & ILLUSTRATOR ETC

  • I’ve designed and published many magazines over the years, as well as producing gig posters, menus, flyers, political leaflets, merch (T-shirts, pants, badges, guitar picks) and much more.
  • I have decades of experience using InDesign and Photoshop, as well as an increasing use of Illustrator.

GOOGLE DOCS/SHEETS, MS 365, WORDPRESS, FINAL DRAFT & FRAME ETC

  • I have a long-term connection to Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 apps and other programs such as Final Draft [dedicated script software] and Frame.io .
  • Also online interfaces like WordPress, project management software/tools such as Google Analytics (and other SEO programs), Hootsuite, YouTube Studio, Slack and many more.

Please get in touch via EMAIL if you’d like any more information. See the rest of this website for specific examples of my career experience and achievements.