REASPONSABILITIES
Director.
Working with a mix of television personalities.
Shooting, lighting, and recording sound in variety of high-pressure location interviews.
BRASS EYE
Brass Eye was a satirical comedy series masterminded by Chris Morris. It took the form of a sensationalising current affairs show, themed around issues such as Drugs, Crime, and Science.
The campaign material featured heavily in all of the episodes.
It worked like this.
Two researchers set up a series of fake issue based campaigns devised by Chris. Basically there were several telephone lines in an office near Leicester Square.
They then approached various celebrities asking for their help with these various good causes.
Once the celebrity had committed to adding their name to the campaign, they would be ask for a short piece to camera. Something that would help raise awareness of the cause.
The chance to capture these contributions would happen very quickly. I had to have the camera kit ready to go at a minutes notice.
We would arrive at a location. As I set up the equipment, and started recording as quickly as possible, the researchers would walk the celebrity through the statement.
These situations were always tense. The statements always lingered somewhere between ridiculous and nonsense.
They contribution were always a one shot deal. If we took too long we risked being discovered. That’s not too bad if you’re in Richard Briers front room in North London. It’s something entirely different when you’re in Bernard Manning’s Embassy Club flanked by several of his security guards.
One interesting thing to note is that although there were questions, small clarifications, most of the statements were made as written.
Once done we would extricate ourselves as quickly as possible.
Darrin // Nightingale 