NUJ Freelance Directory

 

 

I have worked in network documentaries and current affairs television for 20 years.

 

I began my career as an assistant film editor, then as an assistant producer on network documentaries. After training with Westminster Press and gaining a journalism qualification, I developed an onscreen career as a business and personal finance reporter, a science features producer/reporter, and then as a producer and director of half hour current affairs documentaries.

 

My strengths are in current affairs television producing and directing, but I also have a track record writing for newspapers and magazine, experience in management and budgeting, programme development, scriptwriting, on-screen reporting, investigative research for which I have two awards, and video shooting / editing skills.

 

I have directed programmes and reported from 29 countries worldwide with a particular emphasis on international development.

 

At London Weekend Television I was an assistant producer on a series analysing religion in Britain and America and subsequently on the current affairs series Special Inquiry. At Roger Bolton Productions I was an AP on BBC Heart of the Matter and won a BMA "Medicine in the Media" award in 1992 for an investigation into treatments for child cancer.

 

The same year I won a Commonwealth/ITC traveling bursary to research and report politics and the media in Nigeria. I traveled throughout the country for four months before producing two radio documentaries for the BBC and writing feature articles for The Guardian and The Independent.

 

I brought some of this experience to the BBC Multicultural Programmes Unit as a producer/director on an investigation on the exploitation of West African asylum seekers and followed this with an investigation for Channel Four's Dispatches on the Treasury.

 

I developed news skills at APTN and BBC Look North and for a year at European Business News (now CNBC Europe) I was a science features producer and acting editor for the science magazine Future File when I managed a team and a budget. During this time I developed an interest and competence in science and business programming. I subsequently produced two covertly filmed investigations in Japan on DNA fingerprinting and whale conservation and in Colombia on disaster relief for Reuters Television in collaboration with the International Fund for Animal Welfare and the Red Cross.

 

At the end of 2002 I completed a fourth series for the BBC’s flagship current affairs series for Scotland, Frontline Scotland as senior investigations producer/director. Among the fourteen 30’ films I made was a co-production I negotiated with ABCTV Australia which was networked on BBC 2, with further networked investigations on Britain’s chemical and biological weapons research base at Porton Down, and the effects on the unborn child of anti-epilepsy drugs.

 

Other films have included three documentaries on the case of Robert Brown, a victim of one of Britain’s longest running miscarriages of justice; car insurance fraud and an undercover investigation into diesel laundering in Glasgow part of which I filmed myself. The position involved substantial research and development as well as leading teams of researchers and reporters.

 

In February 2003 I advised a new UK based, English language news channel, ATV and led a team to Baghdad to set up and develop its Iraq bureau.

As well as journalistic rigour I bring the visual style and flair in direction expected from producers on one of the BBCs flagship current affairs series. I can demonstrate extensive experience shooting and directing observationally on DV in sensitive situations. I am also Avid and FCP trained.

 

In 2005 I completed a year as series producer of The Business of Development, documentaries for a business audience on international development aired by CNBC Europe and sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme. During this time I developed an in-depth knowledge of international development issues and gained numerous contacts, shooting in 12 developing countries.

 

For a year after that year I worked intermittently as a freelance on the launch of Al Jazeera English, producing business and current affairs programmes in India and Azerbaijan as well as developing the team at the bureau in London.

 

At the end of last year, I concluded a second contract with Mentorn Television as senior producer / director on the Channel 4 current affairs series The Insider, authored documentaries by public figures. These included John Bird (founder of The Big Issue) Tough Love for the Homeless ; Martin Bell (veteran BBC war correspondent and former independent MP) Britain’s Throwaway Soldiers ; Sir Alistair Graham (former UK Commissioner for Standards in Public Life) Can You Trust Gordon Brown? and Col. Bob Stewart (former commander of British Forces in Bosnia) Army on the Cheap.

 

I am currently developing my production consultancy elliottmedia.net and have been working with corporate clients BT, KPMG and The European Business Awards. I have also been developing pro bono work with international charity Christian Aid.