tim maguire

The best laid plans

Sometimes things don't always go to plan. 

Last year, I suggested to The Queen's Hall in Edinburgh that it might be interesting to make a series of films about the extraordinarily varied and eclectic range of performers that grace their stage. The series would be called 'Warm-Ups.'

The rules were very simple: we wouldn't shoot the gig; it would only be the get-in, or the journey to the hall and it would be that special 'back stage' intimate portrait that we generally don't see.

They loved the idea, but then the marketing director left and the idea died. 

This was the first film, that I shot and Sabine Klaus edited, with the very wonderful Karine Polwart. What made it extra special for me was that only three weeks earlier, I'd heard her singing for the first time, at the wedding of her brother Steven (the guitarist in this film). It was a Burns song called The Lea Rig, and she did it accapella with her mum. Not a dry eye in the house.

Isn't YouTube wonderful?

Every so often, you stumble across old friends. Here's two of them.

This was the first ad I ever produced for VisitScotland, under their old title as The Scottish Tourist Board. Directed by the Douglas Brothers, it was written by Simon Scott & Andrew Lindsay when they were still the Creative Directors at Faulds Advertising and featured the late great Norman McCaig reading some lines from his poem 'Celtic Cross.'

On the shoot, McCaig was reluctant to read it at all, saying not only that the audience wouldn't understand it but that he wasn't sure that he understood it himself. I'm glad he changed his mind.

This film had a very long gestation period. The original script by Ian Allan and Ross Thomson lay around for about a year before the thrusting young team of Chris Muir and Al MacCuish inherited it in 1995.

Having just worked on the multi-award winning BBC Radio Scotland campaign with Tomato, we were very lucky that not only did they agree to direct it for the princely sum of 4/6d, but that Underworld allowed us to use their song 'Cowgirl' as well.

Then our esteemed client, Michael Forsyth, the Secretary of State for Scotland (allegedly) decided that it 'encouraged teenage promiscuity' and the spot was canned for almost a decade before it finally hit the screen.

BBC Radio Scotland Campaign

Are you sitting comfortably? Then let us begin... Once upon a time back in the 1990's, I worked at an advertising agency named after its founder Jim Faulds. It was my first job in advertising. In fact it was my first ever salaried job. 

I knew nothing about the business other than that I enjoyed doing voiceovers, admired the good stuff that occasionally graced the screen and fancied a shot at it. My ignorance was blissful and complete but in the two and a half years that I spent at Faulds before they fired me, I was lucky to work with some very gifted people. One of them was Adrian Jeffery, who's just set up a new agency called Mighty Small. He and his art director Lindsay Redding came up with this campaign for BBC Radio Scotland, which was directed by Jonathan Barnbrook and Tomato. 

I learned recently that - more than ten years later - it is still the most awarded campaign in the history of Scottish Advertising. this is Foggie Bummer, one of the three by Jon Barnbrook.

 

If I remember correctly, each of the six spots cost £8,000, which wasn't much money then either. 

I think they stand the test of time - but I would say that wouldn't I?