Rachel watches the Gannets on Grassholm
In March I went to St Davids in Pembrokshire to film John Quilter surfing and cooking on the beach. The weather was awfull so this June I decided to go back for Rachel’s birthday. The first night we had a amazing thunderstorm and in the morning we got up to grey mist and rain. By lunchtime the sky was blue and our trip to see whales and dolphins in the Irish sea was fantastic.
Making films on film is an expensive occupation. Generally everybody works for free. But the problem is we can’t get free film or processing. In addition when the film is processed it has to be transfered onto video for us to edit. So this is where the TMM Film Fund comes in. If we can do small jobs here and there like the odd duplication or short video we will bill it to TMM FILMS. Sometimes The Maclagan Men Ltd donate. When the kitty gets big enough to buy the film stock and pay for the Telecine we can make a film!
Recently Tim Orchard and Anderson West - two talented 3rd year students at Staffordshire University copied 37 8mm home movies onto DVD for £300 - that will pay for two 400ft rolls of 16mm film, telecine and process that will make 22 minutes of a film. Fantastic! Shooting starts in August.
Anderson telecines 8mm film onto DVD in the TMM studio
Now that I’m also a Senior Lecturer at Staffordshire University I’ve also been fingered as a bit of a Health and Safety professional. 
Part of me feels “that’s rubbish” but when I reflect on the number of training programmes I’ve produced it’s inevitable that some of it will stick. So when I start talking about slip, trips and falls or working at height I sort of know what I’m talking about.So producing an on-line induction Health and Safety Training package is kinda second nature.
We’ve only just started so I’ll keep you informed of progress.
All new and shiney our new website. It’s taken a while to get it up and running and we’re still adding to it. There’s still loads of work to do on it mainly uploading videos and refining the text but at least its up there. Just waiting for feedback now.
Screen grab
We’ve done a lot of work over the years for Celebrity Chefs UK. Our little taster programmes have helped launch a few budding Celebrity Chefs. But when John Quilter landed on my desk with an idea for a TV show something rang a bell.
“This guy has got something” I thought.
I went to meet him at his restaurant in Manchester and I liked his personality and confidence. So we decided to shoot a taster tape for him to pitch his idea to TV companies and in March we went off to St. Davids in Pembrokshire and spent a couple of days in the rain filming John surfing (his second passion after food) and cooking up a slap up meal on the beach. We had a pretty good time. When we got back Jamie edited it down to a 5 min promo and whacked it up on the internet.
We didn’t hear much untill I got an email this morning - “BBC2 say its the best taster tape they’ve ever seen!” - watch this space.
Remember this face he's the new Jamie Oliver
John Wiggins on sound, Anderson West the camera assistant and Jamie Bruce on 2nd camera line up the next shot.
Sometimes this job is great. You get to mix pleasure with business and this week I was in heaven - Power Tool heaven!
Yes I know its sad but I kinda like drills, sanders and all that stuff. Well it just so happens that on Friday 5.6.09 we were in Focus DIY in Crewe filming the first in a series of training videos detailing ‘Hot Topics’. This month is Power Tools.
This is a fast turn round job - in and out like the SAS the video was shot on Friday and it will be ready within the week. In fact Glyns editing as I type. In the meantime I contemplating that Bosch cordless screwdriver.
The client is due in at 2pm and we should have the first cut complete
Full up after our nosh
It’s just nice to get out of the office as a team and spend the day chatting and generally having a good time. It’s also nice to go for a meal together and talk about the business, new ideas or just have a laugh.
Each month one of us will choose where we go and book the restaurant. So far we’ve been to Shrewsbury, Litchfield, Stratford and Liverpool. This time it was Rachel’s turn and we found ourselves in Chester. While Ross, Glyn, Jamie and myself went for a walk around the walls, Rachel and Alison snook off for a spot of shopping. I quite like Chester it’s got posh shops and lots of stuff to look at. The trouble is it’s right on the tourist trek so it gets really busy which really bugs me. Still this also means the food is pretty good.
Rachel chose Che Gerrad - a french restraunt and my Turkey escalope was pretty dam fine. I’m looking forward to my Birthday though because I will be returning to the Grosvenor for a slap up dinner and then I’m going to get me some smellys from Penhalagons.
Hi there!
If you’ve come here from our main site then thanks for dropping by and, on behalf of us all here at TMM, I hope your visit has been informative and sparked your imagination. If you’ve come here direct then pop on over to the main site at themmen.co.uk and have a look around and see what we can offer you.
Currently the site’s still in beta as internally we finalise and fine-tune. We’ll be announcing the official public testing and launch very soon, but all comments are welcome so please drop us a line or post anonymously via our beta feedback form.
Thanks again for visiting and check back soon (RSS feed on their way for those who want it). We’re on Twitter any minute as well so there’s plenty of channels to keep an eye on us and stay up-to-date with all the goings-on with The Maclagan Men.
Goodbye, until the next time…
Blogging is a great way of keeping people informed as to what is going on in your company. It gives potential clients a way of getting to know some of the minds behind the company and who they might be dealing with. It also lets competitors know what’s going on (they’re all nosy buggers!), and anyone else who is interested can find out all about you through your blog!
Sometimes I’m not sure this is a good thing, but better communication between people broadens our horizons and can make the world a better place, one blog/tweet/facebook-notification-update* at a time!
Enough of the sentimentality, I’m off!
J
*There must be a better name for this, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is! I’m calling them “Fnu’s” from now on!
I heard about them, I’ve read about them but this is the first time I’ve started to write one. Part of me feels like ‘What’s the point?’ but they laughed at the invention of the telephone and said the same thing. So we have to embrace new means of communication and I’m certainly going o give it a shot. I’ve even got a maclagan Twitter going so lets see how that works out. Ross has also set up a Maclagan facebook. Out of the 3- Blog, Twitter, Facebook one will triumph! Thats if I find enough time to write in them all!