November 2020 - The Diary

A busy November, filled with auditions and more roleplay work as well as more ADR recoding on another Feature Film, to be released next year. We had our first coverage in the national press for ORIGINS OF THE LAOICH. The edit continues for this pilot and from what I have seen already it promises to be

a really exciting project to be a part of and was delighted to be asked! Photo below is again courtesy of the excellent Sonja Blietschau from the Arbroath shoot last month. I booked another television role this month

but more of that later! Delighted to get to see the final cut of CROOKED FRAMES, an Edinburgh set feature film I worked on last year with another really nice cast and crew, in which I play an Auctioneer

and should be released soon, to travel the Festival circuit next year hopefully! The 'behind the scenes' photo below is courtesy of the Production Office. Keep an eye out for it's release in 2021!!

Contracts signed for my next telly role, and was then put into self-isolation for ten days and already December is looking good! Forza..!

October 2020 - The Diary

October was busy, with more roleplay work with Badenoch & Clark in Glasgow and Stirling throughout the whole of this month. It was also another really busy period of auditions and thanks to IAM for some quite brilliant opportunities this year once again. Delighted to be reunited with Team Dropshack again

for this year's 48 Hour Film Challenge and another beautifully shot film in various locations across Glasgow, with all photos here courtesy of Sean Campbell. Fab working with these folk again, and again directed by Jack Willison. The film went down really well with the audience and it can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQkKH3zcenQ&list=PL24263E8D090A63E8&index=60

Had a real laugh shooting this with another fun cast and so enjoy every one of these film challenges in October! Huge thanks & congratulations to all at Team Dropshack. More meetings and self tapes after

this shoot and back into more roleplay work, with potentially more now booked in for 2021. Of course, everything depends on this lockdown being lifted at some point. Had more 'live' work finally cancelled this month which was a huge but expected disappointment. With the onset of this epidemic I have now

had a full 2 years of theatre work delayed, postponed and now eventually cancelled. However, theatre will return and there are far more important things happening in the world at present! Onwards...

September 2020 - The Diary

Shot some extra footage for A PERFECT WORLD this month and prep for ORIGINS OF THE LAOICH began this month, with Gaelic coaching and fight rehearsals! First up in September was another trip down South to St Albans to shoot a COLOPLAST UK Training Video, as the 'live' gigs have all now been 

put on hold for the forseeable future due to the current pandemic. Just lovely to see the team again and really enjoyable work as per usual with these guys. Then back to Glasgow for the first of our fight rehearsals for ORIGINS at Websters Theatre in Glasgow's West End.

A wonderful room in which to rehearse and such fun wielding a broadsword once more! Thanks to Sonja Blietschau for these amazing, atmospheric photographs which were taken during my and Holly Jack's

days of rehearsals, training with STRIKE fight choreographers. More to come on this project later! Was really pleased to be asked by my old pal Mark Buckland to play the role of William in his debut film, SUCH GRACE,THE THIEF, which we shot in one evening in early September, pictured below. 

Lots more auditions followed, and another roleplay booking from POLICE SCOTLAND care of Paul Hughes and hosted by Badenoch & Clark. Worked with a fab team of actors and co-ordinators on this

project, which ran for two months and which will hopefully go again in the future. 

Finally, my episode of BLOOD OF THE CLANS was screened again on BBC4 and is now available on the BBC Iplayer if you missed it! Late in September we finally shot the teaser trailer for Fraser Coull's series ORIGINS OF THE LAOICH at some epic locations, including the cliffs of Arbroath. As you can

see from these location shots, this series looks amazing. Our fight scenes were excellent, and with the special effects to be added, this mystical adventure series should attract a lot of interest from broadcasters

as it goes out to Producers over the next few months, once the edit is completed and further funding

sought to add effects, music and post production costs. An absolute pleasure to work on with a great cast and production team and a really fun and enjoyable shoot once again. It rounded off another really good month for me and really enjoyed these gigs, especially the way things are at the moment!

 

August 2020 - The Diary

 In August I again worked on PROJECT 19, later renamed A PERFECT WORLD and I self-shot footage throughout this month, combined with more scripted scenes. Great to see this ambitious project coming together! Fab to meet up with the creative team behind ORIGINS OF THE LAOICH in Glasgow  

and a superb costume visit to Slater's Menswear in St Enoch, and a lovely, beautifully fitted suit as seen above! Really looking forward to shooting this film, which is set in both the present and the 1700s. But before that I had more ADR recordings to do at my home studio for the short film THE CASTLES OF 

BEACHCOMBE BAY, pictured above. Really impressed with the editing job on this as we all shot our scenes separately on green screen, but they have managed to splice it together seamlessly! Also in August I recorded another SHOOT THE BREEZE podcast with the usual team and our guest Chris Brookmyre.

My commercial for Legal & General PENSION DRAWDOWN also went live on the website late in August (below) and the trailer for the BBC Scotland series BLOOD OF THE CLANS was released

as it will be broadcast next month! Here is a little taster pictured below of what looks to be an epic show!

So, another busy few weeks done and have now booked three more gigs for 2020 this month, all challenging roles and all very very different..! Again, thanks to everyone I worked with this month.

July 2020 - The Diary

As the lockdown due to Covid-19 began to bite, I was back in London this month to work on a corporate video commercial for HSBC with the multi award winning Media Zoo at their HQ on The Thames in Chelsea. A fun, socially-distanced shoot once again, then straight back into the car and the long drive

back to Glasgow. Thanks to Alex and all the team at Media Zoo for a really nice shoot! A quick admin catch up before loading up the car and into costume and back down to London for another commercial.

Again, a fun one day shoot in deepest Surrey for UK CYCLING with a great cast and another really fun job recording a road safety campaign video. Then back to Scotland for some ADR voice over work on the short film  BURN ON ARRIVAL, more auditions and landed a role in Fraser Coull's next production.

A busy month, lots of travel but great to keep the work coming in despite a worldwide pandemic, which is closing down the industry bit by bit every week. Thanks to all the actors & creatives I worked with in July

 

June 2020 - The Diary

A few quite exciting auditions this month, but again all have projected later start dates as this Pandemic continues into another month, however there has been a marked increase in castings these past four weeks. The photo below represents the 'new normal' of rehearsals and auditions at present

via Zoom and Skype, but at least it is beginning to pay off! Lucky enough to have landed another nasty bastard role in short film THE CASTLES OF BEACHCOMBE BAY this month and headed down to a sunny and beautiful Bristol to shoot my scenes at the brilliant green screen studios at 

Vision Eyelight in Portishead. Huge thanks to Director Kate Robinson and Writer Steff Clark for casting me and for a superb, safe and considerate shoot and a lovely apartment to stay in as well! Absolute pleasure working with these talented folk and a lovely cast, even if most of it was all

completely virtual! A superb experience and hopefully we will all get together again in the future to shoot a feature film version of the scenes we just shot. Kate has worked with the likes of Clint Eastwood, Bernardo Bertolucci, Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick (The Shining) so we were

in great hands and this was a fascinating and very satisfying shoot and the first actual film set I have been on in months. Drove back to Glasgow and shot some more scenes for AJ Sykes PROJECT 19 which is really beginning to come together and has a possible distribution deal in the pipeline.

Loved being back in Bristol once again and to be back in front of camera on another super indie project. But with the film industry now closed for 15 weeks we are still a long way from things returning to any 'normality' soon.

May 2020 - The Diary

We are into a 3rd month of the lockdown now and still no real signs of improvement and so have managed to keep active on my film project and working on another couple of voice over projects, having now set up a mini home studio! And with the cancellation of my other screen projects I

have decided on another radically different 'look' for the time being...surely a shoe-in for casting of a Billy Idol stage show? Still managed to squeeze in a few auditions this month and landed a short film trailer shoot with great people. Shooting this next month (hopefully) in Bristol. But with over 40,000

deaths in Britain due to Coronavirus, there are far more important things to worry about. Our industry will return one day and already some television series have restarted limited filming, but until a vaccine is found & becomes freely available, personally I cannot see any return to the way things were for a very long time. Stay safe everyone x