An INCREDIBLE Filming Trip | The Friday(ish) Update

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Friday Update, in which I give a little insight into what I’ve been up to for the past seven days.

First, A Little Update…

First off, a little apology. As some of you will have seen from the recent update I posted, there was recently some illness in my family which rocked us all a little bit. Posts here have thus been a little sparse whilst I took some time to be with my loved ones.

Thanks so much to those of you who sent kind words. Things are still a little up and down but I’m now back at work and putting all my energies into creating exciting things for you all.

I’ll save the reveal about what my next video is about until next week; but it’s certainly one of the most ambitious things we’ve ever made and I think you’re going to love it.

Also, while I’m doing some housekeeping… I’ve made the decision to separate-out some of the different elements of the Friday Update.

Usually, I include a little blog about what I’ve been up to in the previous week and some thoughts on what I’ve been reading or watching. I hope these provide some suggestions about fun bits of reading you might like to do yourselves!

I’m currently in a bit push to do more reading over the second half of the year. It’s part of an attempt to make sure I’m “refilling the well”, and making time to ensure my brain is being filled with new ideas and perspectives to share with you all.

As part of this, I’m going to try posting book reflections (they’re not quite reviews) as separate posts. This hopefully makes them easier to search for and find, rather than having them buried at the end of update posts.

We’ll see how it goes, but I hope you’ll enjoy this little change!

What have I been up to this week?

In the weeks since I last wrote to you all, a lot has happened.

We’ve made massive progress on my next video. But, I’ve also been on a whirlwind trip to America in order to shoot my upcoming Nebula Original feature Boomers.

There was quite a lot to film in this first filming trip. Some of that was to-camera pieces, in which I do some narration to camera. Other bits were interviews, either with experts or “ordinary” people.

I don’t want to reveal too much and give the whole film away, but it involved traveling all across the east coast.

We began the trip in New York City, which is where the Nebula and studio is located. Here, we filmed some portions in the studio, as well as heading out to the New York Stock Exchange so I could film some finance-related sections.

We also conducted some vox pops (or “person on the street”) interviews in Washington Square Park; where a viewer came up and said hello, which is always lovely.

I was also lucky enough to be in NYC for the 4th July. That meant I was able to watch the Macy’s fireworks over the Hudson, which were pretty impressive!

AND I got to go to the premiere of The Getaway, the new game show from the Wendover Productions team. Which is really good! There's about three episodes out as I write this, and it's a lot of fun!

From NYC, we drove down to Washington, D.C. where we had a bunch of stuff we wanted to film. One section involved me doing a statistics demonstration in front of the US Capitol. We’s arranged all the required permissions to be allowed to film in front of the building, but it was certainly a strange experience trying to get my lines right whilst being watched by dozens of Capitol police officers…

All that filming in front of monuments and political buildings, however, certainly helped give me the feeling of being a “proper” documentary maker! Even if some of them are a little cliche…

We also spoke to a bunch of people for vox pops outside the Lincoln Memorial. When we’d done them in NYC, I’d been a little rusty and nervous (approaching people on the street can be kind of terrifying!). But, by the time I was doing it in D.C. I was really into it. So I had a great time chatting to folks about age and politics, and I think the interviews are going to look really great on screen!

Finally, we headed down to Florida. One aspect of the film is about retirement, as the Baby Boomers are now hitting retirement age, and that comes with many challenges. So, we arranged to go to what must be the world’s largest retirement community: The Villages.

The Villages is a bizarre place. It’s kind of like Disneyland for pensioners. Everyone drives golf carts around. The town squares are all “themed”: one as a crumbling Spanish town square, another as a Western-themed town. And, there’s live music and cocktails every night.

I cannot wait to show you more about that in the film.

The whole experience was amazing. I’m used to having, at most, two people on location when we film a video. But, there were days when we had seven; all with their own jobs to do. I learned so much about film making and feel as though I’m now equipped to make my videos so much better as a result.

We’ve still got at least one more filming trip to complete; this time in Europe. But, with so much footage in the bag, the editing process has begun! I can’t wait for it all to begin to come together!

But, next week, I’ll try to tell you a little more about the next video for the YouTube channel, which I think could be a little controversial!

Thanks as ever for your generous support and I’ll look forward to updating you more next week!!