We had to actually get permission from the King of Morocco
to charter a flight into Morocco when the whole country was shut.
And that took a lot of backstage work, talking to embassies
and as I said, we had to get the King of Morocco on board, and he did.
He realised that for the country it would be you know, we were going to be
bringing a lot of money.
So we just went to the desert and did it.
Well, we're going back a long time.
So I wanted to be an actress.
And I trained at a lovely college called New College of Speech and Drama.
Halfway through, I realised how much I loved acting
but wouldn't be an actress.
Not good enough. Went into stage management,
left college, never thought about television
because I loved theatre so much.
And it was one of the actors actually who said to me,
Have you thought about television?
Because the BBC are advertising for floor assistants. And back then
to get into BBC television, you had to have worked in theatre.
So I applied and got the job and kind of took it from there really.
Loved it.
And in those days as a floor assistant, you would do anything
from Grandstand, Doctor Who,
Top of the Pops,
Michael Parkinson. It was amazing.
It was --
you know, the BBC was a factory.
Huge factory, loads of content coming out 24/7.
You didn't know where you were going to end up.
And I suppose a turning point for me at the BBC was doing Edge of Darkness,
which was in 1984.
Martin Campbell, the director, said, Why don't you become freelance?
You know, you've done your bit at the BBC now, you've learned your craft.
So I kind of thought about it and went freelance.
I still did location
managing and then worked my way up to line producing
and then head of production. Forty-five years.
Well, you see, it was it was very different back then.
We didn't really have mentors.
I mean, at the BBC, I suppose in those days you looked up to
people like Verity Lambert and Ruth Caleb and they were very few and far between
to be honest. I was very lucky working for Michael Wearing
who produced Edge of Darkness.
So, yeah, we didn't really have mentors
in that way that we do now.
I suppose Verity was in a way because I just admired everything she did
and I was very lucky later to work with her on The Cazalets.
When actually I went freelance and became a line producer.
I got a call from Dennis Potter,
and in a way he was a great mentor
because I worked for Dennis for about six years until he died.
And he was a great champion of women, actually.
He also hired Sue Gibson, who was one of the first DOPs.
And he really did champion women
in every way, in front of camera and back behind camera.
So I guess you could say he was a great mentor.
And I owe a lot to Dennis Potter.
My day to day as head of production? It's so different day to day.
It depends what stage you're in, in production.
If you're in development, you're
looking at scripts, your scheduling them, your budgeting them.
You're starting that whole process of production.
If you're shooting, you're looking after
your crews, you're making sure that the call sheets are being shot,
that everybody's in the right place at the right time.
If you're in post-production,
it's a whole new world now with visual effects.
Is the post schedule being kept, you know, on call?
The phone can ring. Anything can happen.
An artist could be ill, COVID.
It's a minefield, actually.
It really is.
It's that thing of, you know, Jack of all trades, master of none.
You just don't know what's going to tip up.
So you have to be ready for anything.
I guess the main thing really is it's down to the budget
because you can be making something for, you know, less than £1 million an hour
and then you can be making something for over £6 million an hour.
So you have to think out of the box many, many times.
Of course, it all comes down to the script,
where the piece is being set.
You could be in this country, you could be abroad. A huge challenge
we had during COVID with SAS,
because obviously we had to shoot in the desert.
Suddenly everything was in lockdown.
You couldn't fly anywhere.
But we had a delivery to make for the BBC.
We had to shoot the show, so we had to actually get permission
from the King of Morocco to charter a flight into Morocco
when the whole country was shut.
And that took a lot of backstage work, talking to embassies,
and as I said, we had to get the king of Morocco on board.
And he did.
He realised that for the country it would be you know, we were going to be
bringing a lot of money.
So we just went to the desert and did it.
Oh, gosh. So many. So many,
Mr Pye.
We made that with Derek Jacobi on Sark.
And of course, you can't take any vehicles on Sark.
They allowed us to have three tractors.
Everybody had to have a bicycle, a torch and a map, and that was it.
So that was fun.
Well, Edge of Darkness that I've mentioned, that was amazing.
And I think then Bleak House,
which was
incredible in its own way, because it was one of the first dramas to be shot on HD.
And then I guess, you know, once I joined Kudos,
it was the Spooks, the Hustle, Life on Mars.
I mean, yeah, all of them stand out in their own way
actually, it's very, very difficult to pick.
Very difficult.
Well, listen.
Without the production office, everything would fall apart.
Nothing would happen.
It is a huge part of the industry.
I mean, they’re out of sight, out of mind.
They are just grafting the whole time.
Not only do they have to actually
get this army of people, of 86 people plus moving from day to day,
there’s everything else that happens alongside of it, health and safety,
risk assessments, looking after people's wellbeing, mental health.
It's just a minefield.
And it's getting people to the airport on time to catch a plane.
The production office just don't end up looking after production
and just getting a film done. They are managing all those people
and looking after all those people.
They're normally stuck in an office miles away from the set.
They never actually get to see
what they're planning because they're sitting at their desks.
They are there before the call time.
They're there after the call time.
Listen, nothing would happen without the production office.
Simple as that.
So the misconception about production managers, I think, is
that people think that they're the ones that always say no, okay?
Because the production manager actually
is the person on the ground on that set where people are coming to complaining
if they haven't got a piece of equipment, they need something else.
And I think the production managers sometimes are looked at as the bad guys
when of course, you know, they're not, they're just trying to make it work.
And actually in drama, production manager’s
is quite new in TV drama.
I mean, I guess really it's only the last five years
since we've been having production managers.
Because normally it’s the production coordinator and the line producer.
But now I think production management is a really good stepping stone
for people who are coming up through
production coordinating through the production office,
who want to further their careers. Become a production manager,
you’re there on the ground.
You're really learning everything about everything department wise, budgets,
schedules and then stepping up to line producer and then,
you know, whatever they want to do after that.
So yes, production managers it's a tough, tough gig actually.
You have to have an answer for everything with a smile.
I really want to thank BAFTA for this amazing award.
I am just so thrilled and chuffed to get it.
After all my years of working in production,
but also for all those other people who work in the production office.
Out of sight, out of mind.
You are a wonderful bunch of people.
This industry couldn't be without you.
So yes, very, very proud.
And thank you very much, BAFTA. That’s amazing.