I am a tv drama director, a photographer and a potter.
For 30 odd (peculiar?) years I have made my living directing tv drama. It is work I love and am proud of, and, surprisingly, increasingly enjoy. As a place to visit a shooting set is capricious , chaotic and not naturally inclusive. Constantly holding up the yin of exceptional outcomes and the yang of exceptional cost. Intense practicality, industrial purpose, ludicrously swift paced, hidden beneath glacial slowness and random repetition.
Repetition... 10,000 hours, 10,000 pots, across so many practices 10 years reveals how long it takes to learn anything. Repetition teaches skill, and the skill is in using the repetition to seek out freshness.
The 'glamour of the shoot' is a massive distraction, it is where the money is spent, where actors work, where the action is enacted, it's a workbench. But I so understand why Hitchcock hated shooting, he felt constrained by the realities which stood between him and his perfect plans. The script is the dream that becomes a road map. If the map is clear, the shoot follows it and delivers you and your dream into the cutting room. There the work truly begins.
Personally I love shooting, that could be my downfall. I love the friendships and the intensity of the struggle to make what is not real, appear truthful. Most of the time it is completely enthralling, and some of the time it is total fuckwittery.
As I get older how I earn my living is changing. Partly it is age, but, as I see it, the changes that are coming are the same for most of us. The value of labour is moving steadily towards zero. Making stuff is now a tiny part of anyone's output. We earn our money from selling services and charging rents. And the work making physical things is increasingly banal.
As a director I make things which have no literal value: they are blocks of digital information which get passed around - it is the sharing that raises money. The stuff itself, the ones and zeros can never be given a gold standard cost.
Last year (2020) EastEnders asked me to develop and run a teaching programme for new directors from diverse backgrounds… from underserved communities. As the new year gets under weigh so the first pair of ‘The 6’ prepare to make their first shared block of 4 episodes. My role is to be there and support the stumbles before they become falls. The idea of legacy is complex for me. Part of me wants to be invisible; I don’t want an audience to be thinking about me, I want them to be hooked into the story. There is also a part which wants the labour and learnt skills to have a resonance beyond the credits. Mentoring six new directors into their skillset suddenly has a consequence beyond transmission. They will be doing this after I have stopped, retired, died, whatever it takes… and they will have had my direct input. That feels like a responsibility, and a legacy. T’ai qi masters say that the value of practice is only realised when it is passed on. The truth is, I have learnt far more than my students, and have enjoyed the demands of learning how teaching and parenting are not the same. But how both require stepping away from the 'fixing' of things.
The pots I make are gifts, they are real things to pick up and use. Fifteen years ago Andrew Crouch (The Marches Pottery, Ludlow @themarchespottery) proposed teaching me to throw. His teaching is still a wonderful and inspired gift. Passing the gift on, as a bowl, coffee cup or jug, has created changes both personally and professionally. To make things which are beautiful, useful and durable (Satish Kumar's "B.U.D.") which are gifts, has an intimacy that creates change. That is the theory anyway... and, recently, I have started to sell from the Marches Pottery. It is a new step, a new perception of who and what objects are made for. The care has to remain as engaged as if the recipient were a friend or relative.
Pottery raises a conversation about skill and art and repetition that fascinates me. A conversation that, I hope, will continue here. Making pots has unlocked blocks in my work as a director, and bounced outwards to my love of taking pictures. Curiosity becomes easier through repetition. Skill comes from continually turning up... again and again and again.
I have always taken photographs. Imagining how a picture could be, and working out how to take it, print it and show it, is an investigation. There is an intimacy both in a portrait, and in photographing a landscape. Getting to know a person or a place, or a person in a place. So my plan is to build a portfolio of work and commissions. It's an exploration and enjoyment of the communities I live and work in.
My friend Alison Morton died last year, and the gallery at Ruthin are holding an exhibition of her work until April. In 2017 she and I worked on a series of photographs of her process. And now they are part of her retrospective, along with a short film, “Red Shoes”, shot at the same time. It is intended to be an accompaniment to the exhibition.
There are photographs of Marc Soubeyran making a bass viol in 2017, which still fill me with joy. They went to the player who had commissioned the instrument. Combining elements of making across skillsets is rich territory!
There is a short film (Letter to Andrew) I made on my mobile phone in 2007, originally intended to remind me how to throw, which became a record of process, and a thank you letter. 14 years on I am contemplating the sequel.
I don't know exactly what a website 'is for', but it is something made of nothing that brings together ideas and connections. It is also a place you can come to to commission a film, a pot or a picture.
