Framing Questions for Interviews

How did I get here? After a very long time away from the industry I am returning to film making. My first career was in the BBC's cutting rooms where I was lucky to have been given BBC training. You never forget it. Well in 1989 I left the Beeb to do other things and even worked for the lies side on gameshows for a little while. But TV had lost its allure for me so I ran away to sea, navigated race yachts and became a delivery skipper. This was great fun but a financial low point so I swam ashore to seek my less salty fortune. The world was kind and the sun shone and I laboured at a variety of things, mostly of my own invention but I had some jobs as well. In 1998 I was employed by a dot com. It was a wonderful time for me. I was given a very long job title, a huge salary and was told to, well, do stuff. I did. And about a year later when investors around the world began to wonder exactly what it was they were investing in there was a small hiss and we began to implode. It transpired that the only reason we were making money was because people were throwing it at us. Mind you, a couple of friends of mine and I had been trying to work out how the business made money. But when we tried to bring it to the attention of senior management were told we didn't understand the financial model. Well nor, it seems, did they. With my redundancy money - I was lucky and actually got paid - I retired to my boat to write a novel about an ailing dot com that found a way to use e-commerce to launder drug money. I carried on writing until the money ran out. It was a shame because I was enjoying taking the boat to sunny little spots and sit there all authorial and creative with my laptop and a cold beer. So then I had to earn money so I got a job driving cars onto and off ships in the port of Southampton. This was also a time of great joy for me. I had never experienced such a difference between management and men. The men were a bright and lively bunch whose ranks were swelled by, amongst others, post doctoral researchers from the University. These were referred to as numpties by the management. After a short while I met the Quality Manager who invited me to become an auditor for the QA department. That was great fun and I was toes and nose on the learning curve for two or three years. Systems to run a business. Just like programming a computer we were programming a company and no matter what else they wanted to do they had to do what the system required. Oh how I laughed at the furore caused when I carried out a supplier survey as part of the ISO 9002 programme. The accounts department were too cool to actually provide a list of suppliers so gave us an export of all the invoices they'd paid. Amongst them was a London Freemason's Temple or equivalent. It was like bunnies in front of the headlights - all the masons got very excited because it seems it should not have been there. A little while later I became surplus to requirement and left. Luckily, knowing more than management, I had prepared and sent an e-mail to the competition. There followed a commercially fulfilling relationship which lasted until my business partner turned into an alcoholic, lost his license and buggered off to somewhere in the west country. Luckily I had resigned just before he absquatulated. For some time I had been using a little video camera to collect audit evidence in case my word was ever doubted. Some of the stuff I shot wasn't work related and pretty soon I was looking at editing again. Well, the next thing that happened was my niece wanted a thing she's done edited and suddenly I was on a trajectory from which I have not yet recovered. In fact I've been on courses and all sorts. So now I find myself with four others in a bid to erect a production company. We are all from broadcast roots and have the skills and experience to do anything we're likely to get paid for.