Lockdown and the Crick Report

 
Michael Crick reporter

Lockdown has been both a challenging and interesting time.

The majority of our commercial and content work dried up by the first week of March. In fact, work was being cancelled at the beginning of February - regular client BCG had commissioned some films at the huge MWC conference in Barcelona which got pulled. This was the first sign that things could get pretty bad.

By late February things weren’t looking too great but a relationship struck up with Michael Crick whilst making a film about Brexit led to filming and editing his weekly news show, the Crick Report, for Mail Plus.

Over the course of five weeks we covered a number of stories including Amazon’s growing stranglehold on the UK consumer, whether Boris’s Johnsons government could deliver on its manifesto commitments given emergency corona-virus spending, and the difficulties charities faced raising money during lockdown. Michael was great to work with - an incredibly experienced journalist, he can turn out a cogent and engaging story in hours - and the opportunity to travel in and around London as lockdown deepened was southing else and a visual experience I will never forget. The picture below shows Whitehall and the Cenotaph all but deserted…the centre of one of the worlds great global cities about as busy as a village green on a weekday!

Whitehall London
 

BCG support Pyladies event

 
Pyladies

BCG has a significant number of offerings involving a digital component. Sitting behind these are expert coders and data scientists.

BCG wants to support diversity in this area so sponsored the 2019 Pyladies meet up in Canary Wharf. BCG Partner , Nadjia Yousif gave an inspiring keynote speech about her experiences as a woman working in computer sciences and AI.

 

English wine and the vineyards of the Sussex weald with Michael Smith

 
Michael Smith Writer

Locate East Sussex and the Wealden council commissioned writer, broadcaster and filmmaker, Michael Smith, and Ed Bishop from Scissorhands Prods to make a series of films exploring the vineyards of the Sussex Weald. This is the first film of four, and will be serialised on Caught by the River.

Lovely to be making films like this….wandering through the Sussex countryside soothed by the soft autumn light and colours. Michael is great company as well and a first class creative. Hidden Spring vineyard and the walks around it are something special.

Looking forward to picking this series up in 2020 and tasting more of these scrumptious English white wines.

 

Accenture and Pega Systems

 
Pega Simon Haydn-Lee.jpg

Pega Systems commissioned us to make a series of films discussing how Pega has successfully implemented various digital transformations at scale for Accenture’s UK Government clients.

Helmed by Graham Olding, these films took the format of roundtable discussions where various key people from the Pega and Accenture discussed the challenges and future possibilities for these collaborations.

 

TfL and Sadiq Khan at Stonewall

 
Sadiq Khan.jpg

TfL and City Hall are becoming regular clients. As such, I’ve had a number of opportunities to film the wonderful Sadiq Khan.

Filming the Mayor as part of the Stonewall celebrations on Pride Day was one such opportunity.

It was great to see a politician speak so passionately and directly about the issues facing marginalised groups and the ongoing struggle to maintain tolerance as a key quality of the political landscape.