EastEnders
Throughout 2012

Welcome to Walford

The live run

As in previous years, my biggest employer in 2012 has been working on BBC's EastEnders. The show continues to be one of the most popular programmes on British TV.

One of the highlights in 2012 for all of us that work on EastEnders was a special live episode for the Olympics. The story involved Billy Mitchell, played by Perry Fenwick, being nominated to carry the Olympic flame through Walford. Remarkably the production team succeeded in bringing the real Olympic flame to Elstree and it's journey to the Olympic stadium actually went through Albert Square.
One of the challenges was to recreate the amazing atmosphere and crowds that had lined the real torch relay route. To do this nearly 500 supporting artists were brought onto the set, making the whole site at Elstree far busier than usual. We were lucky to have great sunny weather everyday in rehearsals and for tarnsmission that bouyed everyone into high spirits.
The show went well and was aclaimed as another great success for EastEnders.

Queen's Diamond Jubilee

A very wet day on the river

June 2012

The queen returning from the abbey

With a long track record of working on major state occasions, I didn't really wonder if I'd work on any of the Jubilee events, but where.
The scale and scope of the river pageant outside broadcast was unprecedented. It involved a huge number of cameras, microphones and presenters all working into different OB sites and being brought together at one central site near Buckingham Palace. I was allocated to work at the Tower Bridge site where the climax of the event would take place. With such a great requirement for facilities making sure all the correct kit ended up rigged properly in the right place was major undertaking. The highly specialised requirements meant we were kept busy assembling cameras with unusual set ups. My own camera position was on London Bridge with an 86:1 zoom lens radio linked back to a different OB site, but working into Tower Bridge, all powered by battery. As we couldn't leave the camera unattended all 200kg of kit had to be barrowed in for half a mile each day and assembled.
As most people will know, the event was subject to dreadful weather on the day that tested our abilities to keep kit working. It's been nice to see that one of my shots ended up being used for the daily BBC London news titles.

After the soaking along the river, I moved on to the Mall to cover the Jubilee parade. The weather was somewhat better for this event and we only got drenched at the end of the event this time.

Olympic Games
July 2012

Wembley

Working on the Olympics

Despite having spent over thirty years working on major events around the world, I'd never worked on an Olympics before, so being chosen to work on games coverage for the London 2012 games was a great honour. I was selected to work at the world home of football, Wembley stadium.
From the moment I stepped out of the tube station at Wembley Park it was clear that working on the Olympics was going to be a step above the usual major event. Just looking down Olympic Way to the stadium, decked in the a giant banner with the 5 rings on, no other advertising could be seen at all. Smiling guides were keen to help in any way they could, even accreditation and security were all fast efficient and friendly.
We were at Wembley for the full two weeks of the Olympics. This had one key advantage in that we didn't need to spend hours each day rigging and derigging kit as is more usual on football matches.
The coverage was directed by BBC Sport, so we had the excellent Micky Paine producing and directing our output.
Whilst football isn't one of the big 'glamour' events of the Olympics, it set many records in the London Games; Largest paying crowd, biggest medal ceremonies and set new records for attendance at women's football matches.

Premiership football
Throughout 2012

At Crawley Town FC

2012 saw me back working on more football than I have in recent years, not only the Olympic Games coverage mentioned above, but also on the Premiereship and FA cup matches. I've worked around the country on all types of games from the emotional first home match at Bolton the weekend after Fabrice Maruamba tragically collapsed on pitch when playing through to the fun of being welcomed at the smaller clubs playing in the FA cup competition like Crawley Town FC.

Other recent work
Throughout 2012

Whilst it's nice to be able to display some pictures of the programmes I've worked on, it's not always possible. So here a few other programmes I worked on this year.

• The Mountbatten Festival of Music for One Box TV
  
• Adobe digital marketing summit for Zest4TV
  
• The Freesat awards for Eyetidy