Producer's Diary - June
Winter's here and we've finished all our shoots, apart from a
couple of days of filming we still need to complete our last story
for the season.
We prefer to shoot between mid September and mid-May because the
weather's better and the days are longer. Sometimes we'll work on a
story that can be filmed only in winter - but otherwise we avoid
it.
Our normal crew day in the field is 10 hours, not counting lunch or
any other stops. It's a long day, but it makes sense to work this
way. We're away from home so there are none of the usual
distractions, and it's also expensive to keep a crew in the field -
so we press on to get the job done in as few days as
possible.
But in winter the short hours of sunlight, plus grey skies, mean
there isn't enough daylight to work 10 hours - and everything tends
to slow down.
But when we do shoot in winter, there is one compensation for the
short days. We get some of our loveliest shots in the 'golden hour'
just as the sun rises and sets and its light is softened by angling
through the atmosphere.
In winter, we can shoot at both sunrise and sunset within our
normal working day - whereas in summer we'd have to work more like
14 or 15 hours a day to achieve that. And although we're dedicated,
we're not that dedicated - the reality is that 10 or 11 hours of
work is the most we can manage. Working any longer creates safety
risks and leads to a decline in work quality - and our aim is to do
top-quality work at all times.
But on balance, winter's not a great time to be out shooting -
aside from which there's not much activity on most farms at this
time of year.
Although we've pretty much finished shooting, we've still got
post-production work to do at our base at the Avalon TV Centre -
our series will continue till mid-August so there's plenty of work
left.
We're always looking for ways to improve our programme and
everything associated with it. The latest change is to our website.
We hope you like the new look. But most of all, we hope you like
the TV programme - we've got some good stories coming up, so do
keep watching.
