It’s been a while…!

I’ve been updating my web site and realised that it’s nearly two years since I last posted…. time flies! Quick round up of what I’ve been up to in that time:

In October 2022, while I was in Turin taking part in another Art Department Masterclass with Grenville, we met supervising art director Elaine Kusmishko (1917, Snow White, Little Mermaid). She was about to start prep on ‘Heads of State’, a feature film for Amazon starring Idris Elba and John Cena. I was invited on board in January 2023, ostensibly to art direct the non-UK locations in Trieste and Belgrade but found myself assigned to the high-tech computer data office set… definitely out of my comfort zone! It was a great experience and gave me an opportunity to really engage with Vectorworks as well as get back into working in a large art department. I did eventually go to Trieste where we staged a big car chase through the city with plenty of stunts and SFX. The Belgrade element was put on hold due to the actors strike kicking in and so most of the British film industry found themselves staring at another prolonged period of no work.

2023 looked bleak but a project I had been chasing the year before suddenly resurfaced and I found myself in prep for ‘The Moon is a Father of Mine’, a Georgian feature film written and directed by George Ovashvili (The Left Bank, Corn Island). After a few weeks of research and prep in London, I flew to Tbilisi for a couple of weeks location scouting before Christmas. It was an extraordinary experience to be travelling the length and breadth of Georgia, meeting people and seeing amazing places. The scout was mostly successful but there were still key locations to be confirmed so when I returned in January 2024, our time was spent consolidating all the details. There were many challenges (too many to go into!) but I think the final film will look beautiful and it was a privilege to work with Greek cinematographer Christos Karamanis who did an amazing job under difficult circumstances.

I was back in London in April and dropped straight into running another London Film School ‘Absolute Beginners’ short course. It ended up being a small group of two participants but that was perfect for me as I could give them both much more attention! A pleasure as ever and delighted to be joined by Casey Wiliams who ran an excellent session about set decorating.

While still in Georgia, I was approached by Blast Films to art direct some drama inserts for Sky documentary filmed in May about the 2005 London 7/7 bombings. This was an interesting if difficult little project but we delivered some tricky sets including Berlin airport security check-in and a police raid on a house.

June and July were spent catching up with life (including a 2-week break in California visiting family) then back to the job hunt. My first call was to Elaine who had just started prep another Amazon feature so she added me onto her team and I found myself back on car chase duty within a couple of weeks! The project was put on a two month hiatus for scheduling reasons so I jumped back into a few lecturing opportunities that had been on the cards before the film came up.

It’s certainly been a challenging couple of years for the UK film industry but there seems to be signs of recovery going into the autumn and looking forward to 2025.