I got my first proper paid job

So I'm very happy.

I got a phonecall out of the blue 2 weeks ago from a production company in London called Loki Ltd http://www.lokiltd.com/ They called because they are making a promotional video for a company called Westfield who are making a £340 million shopping development in the centre of Bradford. Their brief called for a video showing Bradford as a modern, affluent, vibrant, and frankly cool place to live, work, and invest! lol

Actually when you stop laughing lol, you might be surprised to realise how much investment has gone recently into Bradford. It has many iconic buildings in the centre like the National Media Museum, the City Hall with its magnificent clocktower, the Alhambra, St Georges Hall,Little Germnay, and Wool Exchange. The brief also wanted to show Bradford as the gateway to the Moors, so some shots of beautiful countryside needed to be shown.

So I went around the centre of Bradford with my camera last week snapping like crazy. I also went to Haworth (home of the Bronte Sisters), showed them Ilkley with the famous Cow and Calf rocks, and into Saltaire to see the renovated mills. I also had to find them a suitable location with a elevated view of the city to do the interviews they had to conduct - with various bigwigs from Westfield, Bradford Council, and the architect. I got them use of the chief of the National Media Museums office on the top floor over-looking the city :)


The director wanted to do lots of high angle time-lapse shots, so I have been to a few places that the public dont often get to - like the top of the clocktower in City Hall where I had to where a hard hat and climb passed cogs and wires and bells lol, and also the top of the library which is about 12 stories high. I've seen the city from some amazing heights this week.

The great thing was that the Westfield site is being made with the full cooperation of the City Council, so we interview the Chief Exec in his palatial offices in City Hall - and were therefore granted access to everything and anything we wanted to film at. If only getting permission to film was always this easy! lol I even got them to film inside an Indian resturant kitchen too.

The crew were a great bunch - am mixture of staffers from London and free-lancers (like me) from up here, and I seemed to nail the gig by the thanks everyone was giving me for the work I had done. I am a very happy camper at the end of this week! Roll on the next corporate job! :) And what a camera they had! The poor DOP's on the various shoots I have done so far would have sold their Granny for this bad boy! lol

PS. I also got offer my second paid job last week, doing 2 days on the new multi-million pound adaptation of Wuthering Heights that is being filmed only 15 miles from here - but I had to turn it down as it overlapped with this job! Typical lol