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On location with Blue Planet II

2017-10-16T09:59:49+00:00

Filming Orcas and Humpbacks on the Fjords of Northern Norway

“You come in to the field with a plan, but ultimately you do what nature tells you.”

Ted Giffords, Cameraman

Humpback Whales

“You come in to the field with a plan,” says cameraman Ted Giffords, “but ultimately you do what nature tells you.”

The plan, for a key sequence in the ��’s forthcoming Blue Planet II, was to try and film an amazing new behaviour. It’s one of countless new behaviours that viewers will see on Blue Planet II, not least because, as series Executive Producer James Honeyborne says, the science has moved on.

“New discoveries have given us a completely fresh perspective on life beneath the waves. What you’ll see across the series are new stories featuring new species, new places, new behaviours, all filmed in new ways. Our USP is very much newness.”

This particular piece of newness consisted of a marine double act featuring both Killer whales and Humpback Whales. More than a decade ago Blue Planet, the ��’s last landmark story of the seas, filmed Orca working Herring. ‘Working’ means corralling the fish, bamboozling them, wrangling them in to a tight ball like a border collie with a flock of sheep. Then the Orca stuns one or two with a flap of its tail and ends up with a meal floating deadweight in front of it.

What scientists have observed in recent years - is that Humpback Whales, all 30+ tonnes of them, have started to get in on the act. Humpback Whales are thought to react to the commotion of the Orcas corralling the Herring. Swooping in and opening up their vast mouths, the Humpbacks swim through the buffet that the Orcas have so generously laid on for them, and gobbling up dozens of fish in a single pass. It’s a smash and grab run of epic proportions.

The plan sounded simple: film this behaviour happening. But in order to locate the whales on the infinite fjords of northern Norway, the crew need to do what nature is telling them.

Nature’s message is relayed by seagulls. The footballer Eric Cantona was mocked when he talked about seagulls following trawlers in the hope of finding fish, but his rationale was sound. The seagulls do indeed follow the trawlers when there are Herring to be had, and it is herring that the Orca, and hence the Humpbacks, will follow.

Today is day 10 of a two week shoot, but it’s also the culmination of two years’ work. Producer Jonathan Smith has been following the herring, and thence the Orca and the Humpbacks, for two years for this sequence. He has done stints underwater, diving with a rebreather (to avoid bubbles on camera) in near freezing temperatures. He has tracked the Herring from out in the open Arctic in to the fjords, where for reasons we still don’t quite fathom they have moved just this last year. The whales have followed. They may not be here next year; they weren’t here when Blue Planet I was filmed. This is Smith’s last shoot. He has yet to see a Humpback pull off its heist.

We are so far north, inside the Arctic Circle, stationed on the remote island of Vengsoya, that the days are hopelessly short. It is deep in to November and every day the sun comes up 20 minutes later. Light is at a premium - it’s workable from about 11am today and it will expire at about 2.30pm. And so a converted fishing boat is readied before sunrise and we head out on to the fjords in the mizzle.

Natural history work takes you to remote places but it is rarely a solitary pursuit. As we run north towards the open ocean Smith is messaging a network of contacts - scientists from the Norwegian Orca Survey, fishermen, guides - all of whom are out on boats of their own already. Cameraman Ted Giffords has his own assistance, in the form of a 1,000 millimetres long lens on a giro-stabilised boom arm, handy for spotting gatherings of gulls at several kilometres. He’s glued to his screen, on look out. And Skipper Torre has an app, naturally, for monitoring marine traffic. It tells him where the boats are, what they are and if they’re fishing. Cantona Theory dictates that boats + seagulls = Herring, and Herring = Orcas. Humpbacks are the final variable in the calculus. You need all of the elements, plus the light and a dab of luck, to be in with a chance of a shot. So far they haven’t got any decent footage of the Humpback bursting through with its mouth open - the money shot - in ten days on the water.

Jonathan Smith promises an abundance of Orcas and so inevitably we start off finding none. There is a slight tension as phones are checked, charts scanned and far off, shadowy surface ripples turn out to be everything but whales. There’s not much time.

The sun, when it does rise, barely makes it above the horizon, a pink bedspread laid on the skyline. But as it does, at around 10.30am, a tip-off comes in, and Smith orders the boat to be turned around. We head to Kaldfjorden. It’s a 300 metre deep, 10 mile-long inlet that cuts south and then south-east between stark snow-topped peaks. We motor there to find trawlers and gulls at the far end and still we see… nothing. Smith remains positive - a requirement of the job, I suspect - “These seas contain the most amazing biomass of animals in the ocean,” he says. “Normally we’d have seen loads of Orcas by now.’”

You have to be prepared. Ted Giffords is in charge of the Cineflex camera that will get us the shot, if only the sea life would oblige. The Cineflex allows the boat to be bobbing all over the place while the shot remains still and composed. There are between five and ten Cineflexs of this type in the world - they’re hard to track down because they were originally designed for the American military and they can’t be moved from country to country without specific security clearance. This one has a 4K camera inside its sealed, counter-weighted housing and it can shoot in slow-motion; previous series like The Hunt couldn’t, and they weren’t filmed in such high definition. But higher definition requires more light. Giffords notices that his technical explanations are losing me:

“Basically it’s harder to do but the end result is better. People will notice a difference.”

You can’t not notice an Orca, especially in these flat, calm waters - their dorsal fins can be up to 6ft high on a male, and they travel in pods, usually five or more. Their stately silhouette is unique. Smith and his crew are seasoned spotters, and a tap on the shoulder alerts me to our first sighting, with one, two, then three spouts as the Orcas blow, several hundred metres away. We chug in their direction and on the way spot our other cast members - Humpback ‘blows’ are bushier and more spread out, I’m told. The sight of the Humpbacks’ magnificent tails rising, fluking and slipping away has me excited, but the crew are unmoved: they’re just ‘logging’ or relaxing, not feeding.

Suddenly there are Orca wherever you look down the Kaldfjorden, carving elongated Ms through the surface, while humpbacks rise and dive in tandem. With the sun now up and the mountains glistening it is an awesome spectacle – but it’s a distraction, and I fail to notice what’s happening on our other side, right up by the shore. It’s a group of Orcas, swimming back and forth in formation, so close to the water’s edge it’s as if they’re on watch. Smith is excited. “They’re definitely working fish. This could be about to kick off.”

And then it kicks off.

“Halve the distance between here and the shore,” Smith calls to skipper as he grabs his binoculars. “Pick them up at one o’clock so we can keep the view… Humpbacks at 10.’

It sounds like he’s expecting the animals to arrive on a pre-arranged schedule, until I realise that the hands of a clock are the shorthand amongst captain, producer and cameraman for target location.

The Orca swim away but there’s a shadow visible beneath the surface, heading directly towards where they were. Smith tells Giffords to bring the camera to three or four, Giffords thinks they need to be on the other side, but Smith tells him there’s no time, something is going to happen now, and right on cue small fish start leaping out of the water, churning it up like it’s coming to a fierce boil. The sound makes me spin round just in time to catch sight of 36 tonnes of Humpback whale arcing out and then back down through the surface. I cannot believe what I have just seen.

But the team know instantly that they have not seen enough: Smith and Giffords take a look at what they just filmed, and even though it’s all there in stunning close-up the humpback’s immense mouth only occupies the left of the picture.

“To get that magic it needs to be full frame,” says Smith.

The captain turns the boat around. They know by now that a hungry Humpback will take several passes at a hearty fish supper, and even better, the Orca are back, pushing the Herring even closer to the shore, driving the fish in to the shallows where they can’t escape. With a silvery slick of fish at the surface, the Humpback must surface too. We wait, but not for long. The Cineflex camera hangs over the edge of the boat, and again the whale’s shadow ghosts towards us. This time Giffords is ready and the spectacle is centre stage: as the whale surfaces the water becomes pockmarked and froths with fleeing fish. And then the whale breaks the surface, mouth gaping open, an epic parabola of baleen-plate teeth, humped back, small dorsal and disappearing fluke, before a colossal crash; the vast shadow recedes quietly in to the deep.

The crew holler and celebrate. “We have one!” says Ted Giffords as Smith congratulates his men. It is the first major behaviour shot they have got on this stint, the culmination of a new piece of scientific observation that it’s hard to credit as real until it’s been filmed and shown. And yet still the light remains the most precious commodity, and so minutes later we’re off again in search of another piece of ‘magic'. The ocean is boundless and there’s always more to see. The Blue Planet film crew just have to find it.

“It’s a cliché,” says Jonathan Smith, still with binoculars in hand, “but the only time you don’t get something is when you stop looking."

And that’s a theme that goes not only for this shoot but for the whole Blue Planet II series.

“We’ve completed 125 expeditions to 38 countries around the world, and our camera teams have worked in every continent and across every ocean,” says James Honeyborne, back in the UK. “One of the things that has really fascinated me during the making of this series is the extent to which we’re on the front line: we’re not just reporting these scientific stories, we’re actually help uncovering new scientific stories. So much so that at least 15 scientific papers are being written on behaviours we’ve filmed. That’s the levels of newness we’re at, that is the great opportunity of being in the sea, and that’s the great excitement for us.”

Blue Planet II starts Sunday 29 October at 8pm on �� One. To find out more about the series read the full media pack or watch the prequel on iPlayer now.

Recreating the Brontës' world in To Walk Invisible

2016-12-23T10:00:00+00:00

Sally Wainwright's new drama To Walk Invisible takes a new look at the Brontë family, three remarkable women who came from obscurity to produce some of the greatest novels in the English language. Charley Stone spoke to production designer Grant Montgomery to discover how the Brontës' world was recreated for the series.

Three strong Yorkshire women, living in a remote place with a brother who goes off the rails… sounds like the plot for a Sally Wainwright (Happy Valley, Last Tango In Halifax) drama, right? Correct: To Walk Invisible is her story of the Brontë sisters, and their rise from obscurity to become the renowned authors of works such as Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.

I recognised Haworth parsonage, the Brontës’ home, right from the opening scenes, having visited there many years ago. But how do you get permission to shoot a film over several weeks in what is now a working museum? Well, you don’t. Instead, the interior of the house was recreated in a studio in Manchester, but the famous exterior and surroundings were built on a car park about half a mile outside Haworth – on a fake hill!

“The parsonage is on a hill, and it had a very particular gradient, so we had to build some of the hill on a huge scaffold rig,” explains production designer Grant Montgomery.

“There’s a shot at the start of the film, where Charlotte Brontë is going up to the house, and she’s going past the graveyard, and all the flagstones are wet – that’s all fake. It’s real flagstones that we put down, but it’s not a real location – it’s an MDF skin over a scaffold rig, with a house on top.”

Exterior set sketch

Exterior set build

Exterior set once built

Not just the house, but the graveyard and the side of the church, as it would have been during the Brontës' lives, together with another house and barn which no longer exist, were all created on the makeshift hill.

“The walls are plaster walls painted to look like stone – and you’ll notice there are no trees, because the trees were planted after the Brontës, when the Reverend Wade took over the parsonage after Patrick Brontë died. We shot down a bit of actual Haworth street, but we changed all the shops back to the exact shops that were there at the time.”

The shop fronts for To Walk Invisible

Grant explained how they had 12 weeks to research and prep everything before filming began, and how every detail had to match the house as it was when the Brontës were living there.

“Because it’s such an iconic literary shrine, you have to get all of that detail right. It was in Sally’s script, that it was the parsonage without the Wade extension, so you couldn’t really do it any other way but to actually go and build it from scratch. For example, the size of the hallway is wider in our film, because Charlotte made her bedroom and the parlour larger after the death of Anne.”

“Sally wanted that authenticity. We built the piano in the front room that Emily played, because it’s a very distinctive piano. We recreated all the books that were on the bookshelves, and all the pictures on the wall, and all the flagstones in the hallway were measured exactly from the original parsonage, and even the handrail.

“But Sally wanted it to feel like it was a house that people actually lived in, so there are scratches and bashes on the woodwork. And I wanted the audience to feel that it was real, as real as we could make it.”

Watching the film, I did feel totally immersed in the Brontës’ world, and it gave me new insight into their inspiration.

“Being at the set build when snow would come through, rain would come through – because you’re really high up, amongst the moors, which gives it an incredible look. And you began to understand why they wrote what they wrote, remembering descriptions of them all sitting in the parlour, when they could hear the wind howl outside the house, and you suddenly realise they were right at the top of Haworth, looking right out onto the moor. So why wouldn’t they be writing things like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre?”

Set panorama as the build is in progress

Set panorama when the set is complete

“Sally’s written a great script, I loved reading it. I kept re-reading it while I was making it and thoroughly enjoying it. It was a great journey to take. It was a privilege, I really mean that - it was an extraordinary piece of work to do. I’d always wanted to film a Brontë story - I think they’re an amazing family - and I kept thinking ‘I really want to meet them!’. I just hope everyone enjoys it.”

To Walk Invisible is on �� One at 9pm on Thursday 29 December

BAFTA Television Craft Awards 2015: Nominations revealed

2015-03-26T16:34:59+00:00

Imagine, for a moment, a world where Strictly Come Dancing has no sparkly costumes, tense dramas such as The Honourable Woman have no emotive musical score, or Doctor Who has no special effects leaving Peter Capaldi with no sonic screwdriver and a TARDIS that's the same size on the inside as it is on the outside.

Not great is it?

Fortunately, in this world, we are spoilt by the tireless efforts of those working behind the scenes of our favourite telly programs, who bring fact and fiction to life on our screens. That's why, from camera operators to costume designers, writers to sound engineers this army of talent will all be celebrated in the BAFTA Television Craft Awards 2015, the nominations for which were announced yesterday (Wednesday March 25).

Sky Atlantic’s Penny Dreadful leads this year’s nominations with five, with �� shows The Honourable Woman and Life And Death Row hot on their heels each gaining four. There is also a strong show of love for �� shows in the two Writer categories with nominations for Happy Valley, Line of Duty and Marvellous (drama), The Wrong Mans, Detectorists and Inside No.9 (comedy). The full list of nominees is available on the BAFTA website.

The recipient of the TV Craft Special Award this year is vision mixer Hilary Biegel, who worked on �� shows such as Only Fools And Horses, Absolutely Fabulous and Newsnight.

BAFTA’s Chief Executive Amanda Berry OBE said the nominations “are tangible proof that the UK is home to some of the most exciting and talented Television Craft practitioners. The Awards also continue to reflect changing broadcast trends, with nominations across a wide range of programmes and broadcast platforms.”

This year’s ceremony will be held on Sunday April 26 in London, hosted by star of �� Two comedy Episodes, Stephen Mangan.

One last look around: Television Centre 18 months on

2014-09-26T09:20:10+00:00

Refurbishment progress on Stage 6 at Television Centre (Credit: Marcus Haydock)

For 27 years my mother was a newsagent in the town where we lived. Every day after the end of school, I’d wait in the back office watching the comings and goings until Mum shut the shop and we could go home. I listened in on the moans and groans of the town as the last customers of the day paid for their magazines and newspapers. It was busy, noisy and I loved being a part of it.

When my parents announced they were not only keen but going to sell the business, I felt an impending sense of loss. I was to be denied access to what I saw as my second home. They hadn’t consulted me about what I wanted. I was left to pick up the pieces. In my own (almost certainly self-indulgent) way, I mourned the sale of it. I denied the necessary post-sale handover of keys and convinced myself that the shop’s new owners were brusque and unfeeling as they moved into the space which hitherto had been mine.

I was thinking about my Mum’s newsagents in the final weeks �� staff were moving out of Television Centre last year. I was prepared for it for this time. I was thorough: I set about ‘saying goodbye’ to the building, using any spare hour I had available to stroll around the site. I shot some video along the way too.

The repeat visits around the newsroom, ‘Doughnut’, Drama building and East Tower reminded me of just how big the Television Centre site really was. I must have lost half a stone in the weeks I’d wandered around there getting footage and saying goodbye. Painful though that goodbye seemed, the site’s sheer scale made it also appear anachronistic and unsustainable in comparison to my day to day working experience. That insight alone suddenly made the goodbyes seem a whole lot easier.

“It was basically a small town,” says facilities manager Mike Eaton as me and a colleague toured the building late last week. “You could spend days on the �� site and not even venture out. Everything was provided here.”

IT equipment soon to be auctioned stored in one of TVC's television studios

Mike explains this in one of the studios currently used for storage of the last remaining TVC items to be auctioned. Row upon row of servers, PCs and other IT equipment - itself an unhappy reminder of my own IT support career past - illustrates Mike’s point: I’ve never seen quite so much IT equipment all in one room before. Television Centre was a considerable site with an equally large footprint both geographically and technologically. It was its own ecosystem. As technology gets smaller, so the need for space decreases and the cost of maintaining it increases. With total savings achieved by ��’s sale of TVC estimated at more than £600m (the sale alone raised £200m and occupancy costs of at least £30m per annum are being saved from 2015 onwards), the sale of the site has an entirely different context.

Refurbishment progress on Stage 6 at Television Centre (Credit: Marcus Haydock)

I’ve charged Mike with giving us a tour of the building one last time ahead of Open House last weekend - four hundred tickets were sold “just like that,” says Mike as he snaps his fingers. We spend time in the Doughnut where he points to the Studios 1, 2 and 3 the former and future home of �� Studios and Post Production, the ��’s commercial studios, post production and digital media services company. Here demolition and infrastructure works have started - early building work is due to begin next year, ahead of the company’s return in 2017.

It seems like such a long way off, until I realise that with all the other building work going on on site to meet the vision for the new Television Centre, TV programme makers would definitely prefer to wait until the builders have completed their work. We swing round and look behind us to what was Television Centre reception and �� News. “Stage 6 remains – �� Worldwide will move back in there in 2015. Stage 5 behind it will be rebuilt more in the style of the main Television Centre.”

Refurbishment progress on Stage 6 at Television Centre

There’s a sense of excitement in Mike’s voice. This is almost certainly his style of delivery combined with his well-practised patter. But that excitement is infectious. Being back on-site after eighteen months with familiar sights still functioning- like the automatic swing doors at reception and the familiar whirring sound whenever they’re activated –stir happy memories and a longing for the past in the way I thought it might. However, a protective spirit stirs, as though we’re looking at a distant relative recovering from rather aggressive treatment. TVC seems vulnerable to me. I’m eager to see its full ‘recovery’. Not only that, I’m also reminded once again of its immense scale in comparison with the significantly smaller space I’ve now become accustomed to working at Broadcasting House in central London. Stripped of its industry, equipment and people, Television Centre's size is even more striking.

Refurbishment progress on Stage 6 at Television Centre

That excitement for the refurbishment to be completed as quickly as possible is fuelled no doubt by Stanhope’s fly-through video and master-plans detailing how the site should look after work is completed. So too, the progress photography on the refurbished offices for �� Worldwide’s HQ – a milestone in the development of the building and a suitable home with an iconic backdrop for a business selling the ��’s brand to the world. I’m surprised (and perhaps a little relieved) at myself about how eager I am for other people to benefit from the site – those who’ll stay in the 40 room hotel, move into the 950 new residences created or just walk through the eventual public spaces. It appears I have found a way of moving away from home.

Elsewhere on our visit, Mike takes us to the Drama Building. Eighteen months ago I saw an old Blue Peter set, a Dalek and Andrew Marr’s set. Eighteen months later, there’s just equipment – monitors, server cabinets – destined for the final auction of equipment next month. “Follow me,” says Mike excitedly, “I’ve got something to show you I’m sure you haven’t seen.”

Painting a picture in Television Centre's Drama Building

He’s right. During my wandering around TVC in March 2013, there were some doors in the Drama Building which were disappointingly locked, mysterious spaces behind doors I couldn’t open. Up a narrow set of stairs and through an equally narrow (now unlocked) door and we’re inside a high roofed room, standing on a suspended floor with a flight of stairs disappearing away from us. It feels like a stage. It could easily be the TARDIS set I wanted my Dad to build me as a kid (but he didn’t because the local wood store ‘apparently’ didn’t have enough material available). Here was my own special TV set where I could for a moment or two, in my head at least, play out my own imaginary TV drama.

Mike explains that this is the scenery dock. The paint on the wall is from a time when scenery painters created backdrops for various TV programmes. “When they’d finished painting one part of the backdrop and needed to get a bit higher up, they’d use this lever here.” Powered up, there’s a sudden whirr and the frames hanging at either side start moving up and down. If the TARDIS really was real, this would be it. And I was in it.

The sense of sadness didn’t kick in here either. Instead I stand there trying to work out when we last made painted backdrops for sets? Wasn’t that years ago? And why did we stop making them? Something to do with TV dramas largely being made on location, technology making it possible for realistic locations to be used in TV production. Suddenly the impact of technological advances on ‘traditional’ crafts – the greater sensitivity of cameras, freeing directors from the constraints of a controlled studio environment and the need for sets, for example – is plain to see. The scenery dock is no longer a destination for nostalgia lovers, but a place where the impact of technological advances on traditional crafts is apparent . And how such advances suddenly make such locations anachronistic. More than any other location on the Television Centre site, this feels like a real goodbye. Timely. Necessary. Healthy.

The fourth floor in Television Centre.

Eager to test out my transformed thinking, I ask Mike if we can squeeze in one extra destination. On the way to theold �� club– now missing all of the familiar furniture, covered in builders dust and the balcony sporting weeds that have grown in between the patio slabs – we stop off at Room 4099, the one office I worked in whilst I was based at Television Centre. Bottles labelled “Fake Tan” have been left on the shelf from the time Strictly Come Dancing had offices here in Entertainment Production. My time goes back to Any Dream Will Do, and the night of Eurovision pre-selection when Andy Abraham was selected to represent the country.

Standing in the office now remembering those memories, I’m reminded how distant this office was from proceedings we were covering online during the live broadcast four floors below. How the distance seems unfathomable now in comparison to proximity of studios and programme making in nearly every other �� building I’ve been in since. Scale has reduced dramatically. Things can be done in less space in closer proximity to production space. It takes returning to a former home to realise just how much things have changed and how much they needed to change too.

Our visit has gone on longer than I realise. My colleague looks at his phone saying he is already ten minutes late for his 11 o’clock. We walk at speed along the 4th floor corridor in search of a working lift (there are only one or two in the building ‘switched on’ now) and head for the audience foyer – now a canteen and office for the builders working onsite. The buzz remains in this part of the building just as it was shortly before it was finally vacated. It’s the sound of the buzz that casts me back. Memories stir. A dangerous moment. I grab my bag and coat from the office and make for the barriers.

Jon Jacob is Editor, About the �� website and blog

Read Facilities Manager Mike Eaton's blog detailing progress on the Television Centre refurbishment published earlier this week.
Discover more about the iconic Television Centre on the History of the �� website.

Our Girl: Recreating Afghanistan in South Africa

2014-09-19T13:11:11+00:00

In 2013, Our Girl, a single drama starring Lacey Turner as Molly Dawes, an East End girl who joins the army, was broadcast on �� One to critical and audience acclaim. Now Molly is back for a five-part series starting this Sunday. In this post, producer Ken Horn talks about some of the challenges the team faced when filming, recreating Afghanistan in the South African countryside.

I’ve just had to make some clips for The One Show ahead of Lacey Turner’s appearance this week. One of the clips shows Lacey’s character Molly arriving at the FOB (Forward Operating Base) for the first time and we see the place through her eyes. I’m reminded of the location where we actually filmed this sequence, in the stunning area north of Cape Town in the Bonte Bok mountain range at a place called Serra Della Camp, a beautiful wildlife reserve.

Though beautiful, the area was deceptive in its charms, and we quickly learnt what the Cape Winds meant. There were days during the construction period where work was impossible and on two occasions large parts of the set we were building were blown over. We had to bring in specialist teams to attach steel hawsers to act as guy ropes to prevent any further damage. The British Army don’t have this kind of problem when they build these kinds of things in Afghanistan as they make their walls out of rock and gravel, ours were made from straw.

Whilst construction was underway on the first big set the actors were in the UK undergoing the first phase of their boot camp. Colonel Nigel Partington (retired) was in charge and was tasked with taking a bunch of actors and turning them into what could pass for soldiers who had completed the rigorous fourteen weeks of training at Pirbright or Catterick and then a further six months specialist training in their particular areas of expertise. Nigel was undaunted and provided a comprehensive and well thought out timetable to get the actors in shape, and he quickly came to realize that as actors they are very good at absorbing character information, by day three he was amazed by how far they had come.

After a readthrough in London (most of the actors found this the most frightening experience of all) it was time for the long flight into the heat of South Africa and the second phase of the boot camp and acclimatization. Getting used to the temperatures was key to them being able to cope with the grueling schedule ahead, again Nigel and his team got them through it.

Other sets were being planned in the meantime, with the series requiring three large builds: the FOB mentioned earlier, an Afghan village where Bashira, Molly’s little Afghan friend lived, and Camp Bastion. The latter being in reality the size of Reading.

Lacey Turner as Molly in the new series of Our Girl

The weather in South Africa on the lead up to filming was pretty bad and it was a worry, we had travelled six thousand miles to film in the sun! On the single film we made last year we had filmed some sequences set in Afghanistan in a quarry in Leighton Buzzard and it had rained on both days, surely we were not going to meet the same fate?

Despite the setbacks and the constant rebuilding of the set we persevered, the South African construction team were amazing and just got on with it. They have a great “can do” attitude and are used to the climate. Luckily the weather behaved itself and out of forty nine days of filming, we only had four days when the sun didn’t shine.

However this was a mixed blessing for the actors. Whilst the crew were mainly sporting t-shirts and shorts, for the actors it was full battle dress, and on some days the thermometer was showing temperatures in the high thirties. We had to make sure that everyone was fully hydrated and bottles of water became the order of the day. Also rivers became an attraction and between takes you could find actors sitting in the cool waters, emerging and being completely dry within five minutes.

Confirmation that we had got it right came from our Military Advisors who all commented that what we had filmed looked exactly like Afghanistan, praise indeed.

Ken Horn is Producer of Our Girl.

The first episode of Our Girl will be broadcast on �� One at 9pm on Sunday 21 September.
For more information about the show visit the Our Girl programme page.
Read the Our Girl press pack, including interviews with the lead actors, at the Media Centre website.
Read an interview with Our Girl's writer Tony Grounds on the Writersroom website.

Scrum V returns

2014-09-05T13:47:13+00:00

Scrum V is about to kick off for a new season, producer Joe Towns gives an insight into how the Welsh Rugby show is put together.

Rugby is deeply rooted in Welsh life. It defines us, brings communities together every weekend, and brings the nation together when Wales play. The rugby conversation in Wales is more popular than talking about the weather. It's this passion (obsession) for the game we try to reflect in our Scrum V programmes.

The Scrum V brand now includes Scrum V Live, Scrum V Highlights, Scrum V Classics, Scrum V Six Nations Special, Scrum V Extra, Scrum V Radio, Scrum V Online and Scrum V Twitter.

You can't escape us.

We joined twitter a few years back which allows us to speak directly to our audience. We get instant feedback on our choice of guests (not always positive, but often about what they are wearing) our choice of music, choice of game, choice of kick-off time and our editorial direction. The discussion between programme maker and punter is both constant and continuous. Usually light hearted and always informative. Ospreys fans tell us we are bias towards the Blues. Blues fans tell us we are bias towards the Ospreys - so we're doing something right.

We are currently developing an exciting Second Screen appliance. It will allow our viewers to simultaneously interact with us on their phone or tablet during our live show by offering them the chance to select their own replays, access our stats and analysis feeds, and connect to our social media output. We refuse to stand still. We just signed a new four- year contract to cover Welsh rugby and we want to give our audience the very best.

Our TV ratings are the highest across our channel (�� Two Wales). In live sport, ratings are often driven by the quality of the match itself, and we can't control that. The important thing is high production values, accuracy and entertainment. Producing Scrum V is a bit like managing a Premier League football team, we have a group of hugely talented individuals and my job is to make sure they all perform well on match day, which, for us is Friday night, our live show kicks off at 7.30pm.

We pray for great games, but the reality is that some games are poor - and that's when we really need to try and bring something extra to the screens. We had a bizarre night at Rodney Parade a few years back where the heavens emptied and the pitch was waterlogged just before kick-off so we had to talk in studio for two hours while they decided whether or not to play. Our ratings actually went up and up - even though the match never happened.

Last year we were the first �� programme to pioneer the REFCAM (a camera referees wear on their chest). We also use a super-hi-motion camera for those lovely slow motion big hits and tackles you see. It's very expensive so we only use it on the big games but it's becoming an integral part of sports broadcasting, where it’s vital to keep up-to-speed with the latest innovations.

The working week starts on Monday mornings when we review the match from the weekend just gone, deal with any issues and try and give some feedback to our pundits. We use a mix of pundits - some recently retired players like Martyn Williams and Shane Williams; some who are still playing - like Ryan Jones. And some legends of previous eras like Jonathan Davies and Rob Jones. These guys were my absolute heroes so it’s a dream to work with them...but sometimes difficult to tell them what to do.

The Scrum V Presentation Team: Jonathan Davies, Martyn Williams, Ross Harries, Phil Steele, Gareth Charles and Sean Holley

We also use current professional coaches in our analysis truck - like Sean Holley, Phil Davies or Kingsley Jones. We take our analysis very seriously - we want viewers to learn something, but it's vital the message is clear. Our main commentator - Jonathan Davies - has a special screen and pen (called the TOG) which enables him to draw live lines and circles on our output to highlight various tactical moves or mistakes. Sean Holley is able to do the same from the analysis truck.

If there's been a technical issue on the live game we try to iron it out early the following week. If we made a mistake with analysis or a graphic or a replay or a camera didn't work properly, we try to figure out how to ensure it doesn't happen again. Our new graphics providers start this season and they need high-speed broadband to deliver their service. This is nerve wracking as internet access at stadiums - when everyone is on their phones - is always unpredictable. I'll never forget the day we were doing a live Skype interview with David Hasslehoff about his love of Welsh rugby and our engineering manager - Hugh Davison - was hanging out the back of the truck with a dongle in the air trying to maintain signal.

On Tuesdays the four Welsh teams hold press conferences.... we film these interviews ourselves and distribute the material to the news, radio and online teams so they can start drumming up a buzz towards our next live game.

We chat to the coaches every week and try to squeeze a bit of inside information from them. We may also have a special request for the Friday game... - like putting a camera in the dressing room... Or delaying kick off by a few minutes so we can have a bigger build up....or asking if we can interview a coach in the stands during play. (We were one of the first programmes to do this and it's now an integral part of our show. Can you imagine that happening in the Premier League? "Excuse me Sir Alex, can we have a quick word?")

Last year the Regions' team captains agreed to let our reporter - Phil Steele - interview them as they walk off the pitch at half time. This was pretty ground breaking stuff for us. And a real privilege.

I try and urge the pundits to always be constructive in their criticism but we don't want them being nice all the time - sometimes you have to say it as it is, the viewers can tell straight away if you're sitting on the fence and it's a turn off.

Wednesdays we plan and prep our VTs. We spend hours choosing soundtrack. I always check twitter during the closing credits to see if anyone has spotted the music being played. We'll also write our scripts and raid the library archives for all the best shots. These days our archive is all digitised so you can type "Warburton tackle" into the search and (hopefully) it will magically appear in the edit suite.

Thursdays we spend honing the VTs. Thursday night is Scrum V Radio, which kicks off the rugby weekend with a 90-minute rugby preview discussion. This is always a big social media moment for us. We send out trivia via tweets and play games like #FantasyXV.

On the Friday night at the Outside Broadcast we've got a team of about 60 people. Security, cameras, sound, riggers, technicians, electricians, lighting supervisors, replay operators, VT experts, health and safety, and floor managers. And then the on screen talent. All the pundits, presenters, reporters and commentators are booked weeks in advance. We also have red button Welsh language commentators to book too.

We rehearse - and then kick-off comes. And everyone shouts, our director takes over, and things move fast, adrenaline flows, and we shout some more. The only advice I could ever give other live producers is try and be clear, and stay calm. Everything is a blur for two hours. When we come off air I sometimes can't even remember the score.

Joe Towns is producer of Scrum V.

From the Docklands to Dhaka: calling the midwife to Bangladesh

2014-09-02T08:44:24+00:00

Production still from �� Media Action's drama Ujan Ganger Naiya

Terri Coates is the midwifery advisor on Call the Midwife. Earlier this year she went to Bangladesh to advise the ��'s international development charity �� Media Action on their maternal and child health drama series Ujan Ganger Naiya.

In April, I found myself in a tent in rural Bangladesh, in 46 degree heat, teaching young Bangladeshi actresses how to breathe as if they were in labour. Not quite what you might expect from an NHS midwife and midwifery lecturer. But then I have an unusual job. For half the year, I’m also the advisor to the �� One drama series, Call the Midwife, where I help the actors and production team depict pregnancy and births in the East End of London of the Fifties.

When I was invited by �� Media Action to advise the cast and crew of a new TV drama in Bangladesh, I was intrigued. Bangladeshi TV had never shown a woman in labour. While the maternal death rate in the country has fallen dramatically in the last decade, pregnancy and childbirth still claim the lives of around 20 women a day, leaving plenty of material for the drama to highlight and explore.

Though there was a language barrier, being on the set of Ujan Ganger Naiya, (Sailing against the tide), was in many ways like watching the �� crew on Call the Midwife. But there were some very marked differences. One arose when I produced one of my most reliable props.

On Call the Midwife I make sure the pregnant characters move and walk as if they are really pregnant and not just wearing a prosthetic tummy. I coach them to make the right noises and to breathe correctly. In midwifery, we often use dolls as props and I took one to Bangladesh to tie to the stomachs of the actresses to help them get used to moving around with an abdomen that wouldn’t bend.

The crew of �� Media Action drama Ujan Ganger Naiya with the much-loved prop doll

When I took the plastic baby doll out on set and put it on a table, it provoked an amazing reaction. The cast and crew were completely enchanted. It was kidnapped for two days by the doctor on the set who took it home in his car. Over the course of my time there it was passed around among the cast and crew, and of course I left without it when I returned home.

Part of my role was to guide the recording of the first ever TV birth scene. The cast and crew of Ujan Ganger Naiya probably had less experience of childbirth than my colleagues in the UK. Bangladesh is a conservative country and child bearing is not discussed very much. The crew were all men and unlike their UK counterparts not one had experienced childbirth. They looked particularly uneasy during the rehearsal for a birth sequence! This was a first for all of us but I think we did it in an appropriate way and didn’t show anything that should not have been shown - the most you ever see is an ankle.

On Call the Midwife we’re very keen that portrayal of anything clinical or medical is as accurate as humanly possible. Likewise, in Bangladesh I was extremely impressed with the level of research and amount of preparation that had gone into the programme.

It was gratifying to be able to help the crew to show an accurate portrayal of childbirth on television for the first time. And with my lecturer hat on, I was extremely excited to put out health information to many millions of people at one time.

Switching between the reality of midwifery and the fictional world of drama means I have a unique perspective on childbirth. It can be a bit surreal though. Back at my normal job, when a woman has just given birth, I do sometimes feel tempted to say to her, “Well if that wasn’t quite right for you, perhaps we can just rerun it one more time!”

Terri Coates is midwifery advisor on Call the Midwife.

Find out more about the work of �� Media Action
Read Terri's TV blog Call The Midwife: I have the strangest job

�� Studios and Post Production at Elstree

2013-12-17T10:57:58+00:00

Since I last wrote on the About the �� Blog back in March of this year, �� Studios and Post Production has had a busy time of it at its new base here in Elstree. Now at the end of 2013, I wanted to use this post to explain what we've been up to, give some insight into how we've made our migration out of Television Centre work and take a peek into plans for our return.

But first, an explanation of what �� Studios and Post Production is and does:

�� S&PP is a ��-owned commercial company, providing facilities to make programmes and manage media. Very simply we operate studios - 'the boxes' - where TV programmes are made. We carry out post production, making sure the content 'comes together' in the right way. Our Digital Media Services also do quality checking and prepare and deliver content for transmission or distribution. Very often programmes have another life after broadcast and they also take material from deep in a broadcaster's archive and help re-purpose it for a future digital life. In short, �� S&PP is involved in nearly all of the TV production process - following the entire lifecycle of the media asset, from creation to archive.

Working with independent media companies and other broadcasters

As well as providing studios and post production for some of the ��’s flagship shows such as Strictly Come Dancing, EastEnders and Children in Need, we also work with a range of independent production companies making programmes for other broadcasters – for example CPL Production’s A League of Their Own for Sky and ITV’s Your Face Sounds Familiar - and with content owners – like Imperial War Museums, helping them preserve and maximise the value of their material.

We're based at �� Elstree, where we help make EastEnders and have our Elstree Studio D (larger than Studio 1 at Television Centre), and at Elstree Film & TV Studios, where we've worked hand in hand with Hertsmere Council, who own the business, to transform the site. We’re also in Bristol at The Bottle Yard Studios, where we help Endemol make Deal or No Deal for Channel 4 and our Digital Media Services team are in South Ruislip in West London. This blog focuses on what we’ve been up to at Elstree.

Working hard to make something brilliant

At Elstree, there's a real sense that we're at the heart of making television: there is an air of glamour about the place with EastEnders recording 50 weeks of the year, plus a constant stream of other shows in production. [At the time of penning this post, C��'s Friday Download is shooting its Christmas special in the same studio episodes of That Puppet Game Show was recorded, Pointless (pictured above) is in Stage 8, House of Fools is in Stage 9 (pictured below) and Strictly is in the George Lucas Stage].

In November when the live Children in Need show came from �� Elstree the whole site came alive: there was a huge buzz, lots of creativity, lots of celebrities, lots of concerts, lots of humour and lots of teams working together to really pull the whole thing off. For me, that is the reality of television: lots of people coming together and working hard to make something brilliant.

Migrating to Elstree and transforming the site

Even though we were of course sad to leave Television Centre back in March (we've already started planning our return to the site in 2015), what �� Studios and Post Production has achieved on the Elstree site is impressive. Working closely with Hertsmere council, we've turned two medium size stages into professional TV studios with laser-levelled floors and purpose built galleries, we've installed production galleries alongside the supersize George Lucas Stages and refurbished all the dressing rooms, green rooms, make up and wardrobe areas. We've really made it work for creating television here, bringing big shows previously produced at Television Centre and transferring them to an entirely different site and in many cases, improving facilities for production teams. And what's inspiring for me is that every day of every week I see this site come more alive and be more energised because we're here doing what we do.

Over the next few weeks, you'll be able to read in more detail about what we've done at Elstree and how we're preparing for our return to Television Centre from Technical Development Manager Danny Popkin. But in this post I wanted to introduce how we've made the move to Elstree work.

The project for 'migrating' to Elstree started a year ago. Moving a business that had been in Television Centre for 30 years was a massive undertaking and it wasn't until quite late on that we knew the details of when and how we were going to move. The move happened while we were still operating TVC studios and doing big shows like Strictly, Later with Jools Holland and Goodbye Television Centre right up to the last minute. The organisation was also going through a restructure (necessitated by leaving TVC) so there was a lot going on.

So, in setting up services here at Elstree there was a large degree of pragmatism. People came together and said to one another, 'this is where we are: a lot of us are sad to be leaving Television Centre for a bit but we're up for the challenge of Elstree; we're up for creating something really good here. And that is reflected in our solutions: the way some of the technology has been refurbished and repurposed; how equipment originally installed at Television Centre has been moved to Elstree and used with other existing equipment and made to work at a new location. And it's not just what you see in the studio, it’s what you see 'at the back' - wiring, technology and facilities. It was an extremely complex thing to deliver and is testament to the creativity and ingenuity of the teams that work at �� S&PP. They're passionate about what they do. And that work was completed on time and on budget too.

Making Strictly in Elstree

From day one of the migration planning phase we were thinking about Strictly Come Dancing. It's one of those productions we've had the privilege to work on for many years. It galvanises everyone within �� S&PP. So front of mind was the need to really deliver for the Strictly production. Strictly is not a programme where you want there to be any risks taken at all. As well as making the stage look wonderful for the cameras, we also had to consider all the backstage facilities and the technical provision for production teams. There's been a huge amount of planning which has gone into that to make sure that all of those elements are in place. We spent some time with members of the Strictly production team in the last few weeks of the 2013 run. You can see what Executive Producer Louise Rainbow and Lighting Director Mark Kenyon made of their Elstree experience in the video below.

Louise Rainbow and Mark Kenyon talk about making Strictly Come Dancing at Elstree.

Many of these considerations are the kind of thing TV audiences wouldn't necessarily see or think about when they watch the programme, like the state of the dressing rooms or creating TV galleries for what is now the largest studio in Europe with permanent TV galleries. But they are crucial to a well-run show and a quality end product. We were constantly thinking, 'how can we make this sing' in terms of production facilities? Being at Elstree Film & TV Studios gave us an opportunity to think about how we could offer the very best facilities and when Strictly is on there's a palpable sense of vibrancy and an energy there now. I really do think that since we've been here we've brought something to the site working very collaboratively with the other organisations based here.

Returning to Television Centre in 2015

Beyond 2013 and 2014, we are returning to Television Centre. Planning is already underway and we're getting excited about what the refurbished site is going to be like. It will, of course, be very different from how we left it. It will be a multi-use site which in itself brings opportunities and challenges in equal measure. We started the planning work on this months ago, working very collaboratively with the new owners Stanhope, the �� and �� Worldwide to ensure what we go back to is going to be fantastic.

As I wrote back in March, we'll be going back to Studios 1, 2 and 3, but what we're having to do is completely re-imagine how that section of Television Centre is going to work. Before we had a broader footprint across the entire site. Now, everything is going to be part of our 'zone' - all the areas around those studios. So we're having to spend a lot of time thinking about how we can optimise those areas of the building to include dressing rooms, production offices, TV galleries and audience areas, all the time making sure there's a real sense of 'flow' on the site. Most importantly we want to make sure that when people come back they feel they're returning to something great rather than coming back to something where we've just closed the door and opened it again. It's also an opportunity to really take forward the Television Centre site. We'll be putting new technical equipment into the galleries and also refurbishing a lot of the other 'ancillary' production areas.

The galleries will be upgraded: right now we're thinking about what the future TV standards are going to be and how we can create facilities with that flexibility for the future. You should see very flexible, configurable galleries bringing together existing equipment we already have and supplementing that with new technology.

An inspiring place to work

Even when the studios are quiet or there aren’t high-profile shows being made, there’s an air of excitement along my route into the office, down the corridor which lines the many studios here.

It’s then I see all the pictures on the wall of all the films and TV programmes that have been made here – the heritage of Elstree. A place associated with the greats of both media. For me, that brings a little glamour to my day.

�� Studios and Post Production is a fantastic company staffed by a group of people with huge energy and a real 'can-do' attitude, who have grown up with the �� and care passionately about all our customers. I feel privileged to work with people who really care about what they do. That is really inspiring.

Anna Mallett is CEO, �� Studios and Post Production

Visit the �� Studios and Post Production website
Read Ann Mallet’s blog �� Studios at Television Centre from 2015
Read also Television Centre in the ��’s own words
And 'That's Entertainment': bringing Strictly 2013 to our screens

Dressing rooms and Dance Routines: Making Children in Need 2013

2013-11-13T14:03:15+00:00

Harry Hill filming for Children in Need 2013

My name is Paul Wright and I’m the Executive Producer for this year’s Children in Need programme, broadcast live on �� One on Friday. I’ve been asked to blog about what’s been involved in putting together this year’s live charity fundraising TV show.

First, a little about me. I joined the �� in 1998, working first in the newsroom on the sports news for News 24 (when it was still called News 24), progressing to �� Sport working mainly on Match of the Day and a bit of Grandstand, the Athens Olympics and the European Football Championships for the next seven years or so. For the past seven years I’ve worked in entertainment production, on documentaries like Comedy Map of Britain, entertainment shows like Strictly plus a load of behind-the-scenes documentaries for �� Three too, like EastEnders Revealed.

My charity show experience started with Sport Relief a few years ago. I’ve been a Series Producer on Children in Need two years running, and now this year, I’m the Executive Producer.

By show night on the 15^th November we will have about 250 people working on Children in Need, including our production team, the crew, the charity staff, press, marketing and digital staff.

It’s a massive machine that makes seven and a half hours of live television. It’s something exciting to be involved in. Children in Need is seven hours of television to make. When we stare at the blank piece of paper back at the beginning of production, it can sometimes seem a bit daunting.

Like all big productions, Children in Need grows from small beginnings. Back in April of this year myself and a development assistant producer began exploring ideas in earnest for about eight weeks, trying and planning what we could do, working out what opportunities were coming up, which celebrities might be around, and beginning to think in earnest what the show could be.

There are of course tried and tested ways of approaching it: we know we will go to the Nations and Regions for a certain number of times in the night; we know we will need about 12 appeal films; we know that we need to make a certain amount of ‘thank you films’. We work out how many music performances we need, how many entertainment items we’ll need on ‘tape’, and then how many studio items we need. The hardest job of all, I think, is getting the mix right, in such a way that it appeals to everyone in the audience from children to grannies, to mums and dads.

At the end of those eight weeks we don’t have a finished show so much, but we do basically have a plan, meaning we can put a lot of the early calls in to presenters, and get a lot of the booking done quite early.

Even after that initial eight week period, we still only have a small team working on production for the end show. A total of six producers work on Children in Need between June and November: me, a series producer and four other producers, supported by a small production team. That’s it.

Recruiting those producers is tough, because they need a wide range of attributes. For example, the person looking after the live Call The Midwife performance in the show, is the same person who’s looking after the pre-recorded Harry Hill sketch and the Catherine Tate sketch (pictured). So they need to be producers who can work with a wide variety of performers, but also need to understand how to produce and direct pre-recorded material and know how to work in a live studio environment. They might be working on sketches or highly choreographed dance numbers. Such a broad skill-set calls for great knowledge, and considerable amounts of experience and flexibility. It makes the role a unique job.

Like Strictly, our big challenge this year has been that Children in Need isn’t at Television Centre. That’s a huge change because the show has been at Television Centre for 32 years.

At Television Centre there was sense of a familiarity: we’ve known from experience for example that at TVC we require 54 dressing rooms and that we can turn them around three times during the broadcast, giving us capacity for 150 dressing rooms throughout the night. Elstree has nine dressing rooms. So we are building a campervan village at Elstree, shipping in campervans for the night, parking them up in the old Grange Hill car park, and constructing a cover over all of them. Essentially, we’re building one big dressing room village to house everyone coming to perform for the nation.

Collaboration has been the only way we can rise to these kinds of challenges. For this one night we’ve worked with people from �� Resources, �� Studios and Post Production, the �� Academy, and �� Ellstree site management. Children in Need is no small undertaking.

The great thing about Elstree this year is that there’s a fantastic 'playground' there for us. The EastEnders set and Albert Square is a great backdrop. EastEnders have always traditionally given us something for Children in Need, often it’s a song and dance routine, last year it was a comedy piece with Lord Sugar in the Square. What might they think about us using the square this year? Eastenders exec Dominic Treadwell-Collins and company manager Carolyn Weinstein have been totally supportive about the possibility of using the location.

So, on Friday you’re going to see JLS perform in Albert Square. You’ll also see the cast of EastEnders dance live. It’s never been done live before, so that’s required a whole separate outside broadcast team to go into Albert Square. Our ambitions have really ramped up this year.

We’ve also collaborated with the One Show who have very generously let us have the finale of their Children in Need Rickshaw challenge so it will finish in Albert Square. That will be a fantastic moment, one I’m really looking forward to.

Children in Need and other charity telethons rely on the goodwill and collaboration of everyone on the programme. We rely on a great many other people across the �� who want to participate in Children in Need in order to make the show a success.

They do it for one reason only, they do it because it’s the ��’s charity. That’s what they tell us. We are incredibly grateful for their generosity and enthusiasm.

You can find full details of the incredible line-up for the night on the Children in Need website, but let me use this opportunity to give you some of the highlights.

Harry Hill (above) parodying Aha’s iconic pop video Take On Me – I don’t want to give the game away particularly, but it involves Harry chasing a large sausage.

Catherine Tate’s sketch show favourite Nan will be back and will be laid up at Holby City where she will be the worst patient in the world. Frank Skinner has opened the doors to Room 101 specifically for children, giving three of them the opportunity to vent their pet peeves.

Ellie Goulding is performing the Children in Need single this year, How Long Will I Love You, One Direction will be performing in our studio, Doctor Who have given us a scene from the 50th Anniversary episode. The stars of Call The Midwife will be performing in the studio and Matilda the Musical are coming in and they’re going to perform a medley.

The Strictly team have been brilliant, giving us an hour of their rehearsal time to record a special Strictly Come Dancing for Children in Need with Torvill and Dean: can the legends of ice-dancing pull off the same trick on the dance floor of the ballroom?

There’s a number of things to measure our success. The money raised on the night is massively significant, we want to raise as much as we possibly can. It’s with that in mind that probably, one of the best things about this job is the 12 appeal films you see during the show – which we make. When you see the appeal films it’s almost like a short-cut to make you realise why you are doing this job. I challenge anybody not to be moved by those appeal videos. That’s ultimately why we are doing it. If the money we raise helps the people who need it – the disadvantaged children in the UK who we see in the appeal films, that’s a real success.

For me this is about putting on the best show we can, and if we break the record, amazing. But, the bottom line we’re working to raise as much money as we possibly can. I really hope you enjoy the show on Friday night.

Paul Wright is Executive Producer, �� Children in Need

Children in Need is on Friday 16 November 2013 on �� One from 7.30pm.
On Thursday 15 November 2013 at 8pm, �� One broadcasts Children in Need Rocks, a special line-up of musical performances from the Hammersmith Apollo.
Last week we blogged about Pudsey in St Pancras.
Read more about what the history of Children in Need and some of the ��'s other charity appeals.

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