tim maguire

Fitba Cliche

Gavin MacDougall of Luath Press liked my promo for The Well-Tempered Clavier and suggested that we might do something for Poet and former Hibs mid-fielder Alistair Findlay whose new book 100 Favourite Scottish Football Poems is due to hit the shelves in mid-November, so my old mate Chris Muir and I hit the road to Hampden early on the day that Scotland beat the Ukraine 2-0 and spent the day persuading fans to read bits of different poems.

The Tartan Army rose superbly to the challenge, and I just hope we can do it all again when Scotland beat Italy...

Scottish Football Poetry

Luath Press are about to publish a new book called 100 Favourite Scottish Football Poems edited by former Hibs mid-fielder and poet Alistair Findlay.

There's some excellent poems in there, but I particularly liked the one that opens the collection, "Scotch Soccer", by Alexander Scott, which also opens this clip.

Belhaven in a Box

It struck me some time ago that children who have grown up in the last decade have a more intuitive grasp of image making and new media than the rest of us, so I was delighted when the Trustees of Belhaven Hill, a prep school in East Lothian, agreed with my suggestion that we could make a more interesting portrait of the school if we saw it through the childrens' eyes.

I brought in the gifted documentary maker, Tracey Fearnehough, who specialises in working with children and over eight months we worked with the pupils in year one to make a 15 minute film, of which this is the title sequence. It was conceived and written by the children themselves, and realised with the help of Tracey, award wining animator Christina Ertze and editor Ling Lee.

Queen Victoria School - Reading the Riot Act

I've made three promos for educational establishments over the last year, and this one, for QVS, the only boarding school in Scotland for the children of serving members of the Armed Forces, was the first.

I had hoped to get the kids to make their own films but for various reasons this didn't happen, so the programme is more of a traditional observational documentary than it might have been.

That said, the school were great, gave me complete access and allowed me to show aspects of the every day life of the kids and staff that most clients would have been very reluctant to include. I think the finished film is the stronger for it and this clip is just one example.

You Have Been Convicted of the Heinous Crime of Murder...

One of the most enjoyable aspects of making this promo for Edinburgh University was working with four students to help them make their own, one minute autobiographical films about their time there.

I originally briefed about a dozen students but only four lasted the course and this, by a law student whose name I'm ashamed to admit I've forgotten was one of my favourites. While we had some great contributors, from novelists Ian Rankin and Alexander McCall Smith to the venerable statesman Tam Dalziel, I think it was the student films that swung the CASE jury sufficiently to grant the project a Silver Award.