Turn On, Tune In Speaker Profile: Dan Reed

We look ahead to tonight’s ProductionBase Turn On, Tune In at The Hospital Club. First up, we’ll be joined by award-winning Director, Dan Reed, whose powerful, visually-distinctive documentary work has won international acclaim.

BAFTA Craft Winner 2011
Winning the Factual Director BAFTA in 2011, sponsored by ProductionBase.

After 6 years working as a Director at the BBC, he left in 1998 to make a documentary for Channel 4 about the war in Kosovo; True Stories: Kosovo – The Valley. Dan and his crew risked their lives to gather footage from both sides of the front line to create the feature length documentary, which was later nominated for the Flaherty Documentary Award at the BAFTA Craft Awards in 2000.

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Student View: Learn From The Masters

Samuel Thornhill takes a look at how media undergraduates can expand their knowledge and improve their career prospects by taking advantage of the opportunities on offer from the likes of the BFI, BAFTA and The British Council.

‘It all starts here. Every line of dialogue and piece of action first appeared on the blank page of the screenwriter.’ Or did it? Was the ‘blank page’ actually covered in creative murmurings scratched onto post-it notes? As an undergraduate, there’s a limit on how much you can learn in a conventional university environment. It’s important to learn from the best and a great way to do this is by attending guest lectures and seminars from successful industry personalities to get the inside scoop on their working methods as unconventional as they may be sometimes.

In recent weeks, BAFTA has played host to a series of screenwriting lectures by some of the industry’s finest screenwriters which has somewhat lifted the lid on the method and the madness behind creating a successful screenplay. The five part series has featured guest lectures from comic book enthusiast and the man behind Christopher Nolan’s Batman franchise, David S. Goyer; Oscar nominee and writer of Erin Brokovich and The Soloist, Susannah Grant; the creative force behind the Bourne franchise and Michael Clayton, Tony Gilroy; Hossein Amini, one of a select few that beautifully construct screenplays through stunning visual direction and Richard Curtis, one of the cornerstones of quintessential British romantic comedy.

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TV & Me with Writer/Director Hugo Blick

TV & Me with Writer/Director Hugo Blick

This week, we catch up with 2012 BAFTA Television Craft Awards winner, Hugo Blick, as he discusses past success, Marion & Geoff, how he got his break starring in Batman, and winning that all important BAFTA for Director of BBC 2’s The Shadow Line, proudly sponsored by ProductionBase.

You’re career began as an actor and you famously starred in Tim Burton’s Batman, playing the young Jack Napier, who killed Bruce Wayne’s parents and later became the Joker. How did you’re career as an actor aid you in becoming a successful director?
Marshalling a film crew is quite a military sort of thing but acting in front of a camera and all those people is really quite delicate. If you haven’t experienced that exposure it’s easy to not recognise just how vulnerable an actor can feel.

Was it an easy transition to make, did people take you seriously?
A loaded question there! First thing, I take actors very seriously! But you’re right to the degree that acting and directing are very separate talents and one doesn’t necessitate ability in the other – although Clint Eastward appears to have made a pretty good fist of it!

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