Simon Burke returned home in October 2009

If you haven’t seen the episode of Banged Up Abroad that features Simon - here is a brief summary of his ordeal. In January 2007, Simon went on holiday with his friend Sarah Jackson to Peru. Unaware that Sarah was in Peru to smuggle cocaine to the UK in order to pay off her debts. Sarah was using Simon as cover for her drug running after a dealer had told her it would look less suspicious if she had a ‘boyfriend’ with her. After they visited Machu Picchu they then flew onto the Peruvian capital of Lima where Sarah was busted by customs at Jorge Chavez International Airport. 10 kilos of cocaine were found in her suitcase. An unsuspecting Simon was suddenly implicated and drawn into a nightmare that was to last over two years (watch a clip of the episode here).

Despite Simon knowing nothing about the drugs, he was arrested and sent to jail. After nine months, Sarah eventually persuaded Peruvian officials that Simon wasn’t involved in the smuggling attempt. He was released from prison on November 1st 2007 but he remained under house arrest on ‘conditional freedom’ until last Sunday.

An excited and relieved crowd of family, friends and reporters were there to meet Simon on Sunday afternoon. He walked out of the arrivals gate to applause, cheers and tears. We stole Simon away from his parents and friends for a quick interview, where he managed to sum up his thoughts and feelings whilst clasping a well deserved can of Stella.

The one good thing he can take with him from his experience is the support of his friends, family and the online facebook group as they were what kept him going throughout his ordeal. Moving forwards, Simon hopes that he can educate others, so that they won’t make the same mistakes he did. He wants people to be careful, and aware of their surroundings, especially when travelling. If you want to leave Simon a message, you can visit his Facebook group here.

The night before the drama shoot of the last episode Anna Marie Pitman, Field Producer and I returned from a successful late night flit to Walmart (very similar to Woolworths - RIP) to find 3 cop cars in the parking lot of our apartment, 2 cops cars on the street outside and a helicopter hovering over head. We negotiated our way past the cop cars and after some difficulty finding a parking spot, were told by the by-standers that there was a Fugitive on the loose in the grounds of our apartment! The irony was not lost on us. Apparently, the police men were an elite squad of law enforcement officers who had been sent to apprehend the fugitive. We were told they were looking for 'a man in a white t-shirt'.

Text messages were immediately sent to the director and other crew members and we retired for the evening. As we laughed to ourselves and climbed the stairs to the apartment it couldn't fail to cross our minds (albeit fleetingly) that we would find the fugitive sitting on our sofa, watching Crimestoppers and drinking our beer. Of course this wasn't the case.

The following morning we awoke at 5 am for shoot day 1 to find that the fugitive was still on the loose and our car had been towed because we were parked in the wrong spot. Fortunately, the remained of our shoot in San Diego was much less eventful and aside from a good number of temperamental action cars we had an excellent experience with a talented cast and crew.

Ness, you should’ve caught him and offered to tell his story! Brilliant!

Fi

x

Where do you and the team tend to get your ideas from?

Unfortunately there isn’t a magic ideas box perched on my desk, spitting out ready made TV gems five times a day – if only! We have to work at them. It’s about keeping your eyes and ears open to what’s going on in the world, to what people care about, what they want to learn about or laugh about, looking for the stories and characters reflect something about our society today. Ideas can come from just about anywhere. Newspapers, books, films, the internet, daily life: anything that gets you thinking in a certain way can lead to a good idea.

What is the craziest idea you’ve ever heard that was pitched?

Celebrity Vasectomy: LIVE… That said, I would definitely watch that if it was on.

Go on- how much TV do you watch a week and do you think it is important to?

I try to watch lots and lots of television. (It’s work, I have to!) I think it’s really important to know what’s on, what’s working well and what isn’t. It also stops you pitching ideas that have already been made! Not that I’m speaking from personal mortifyingly embarrassing experience here…

I’ll tell you what though, it is suspiciously quiet in the office at the moment (discounting the outrageous noise from the demolition site outside) but I’m pretty sure that means that the next great idea is being formed right… about… now!

Great work Developers and welcome to Izzy and Jo who’ve recently joined the team!
Fi      x

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that whilst we are all busy in the office working on day to day comings and goings, that all over the world there are crazy, creative and inspiring shoots going on. I thought it would be great for us all to hear about what has been going on so I asked Bari, producer of  our drama-doc series ‘The Fugitive Chronicles’ for some highlights - this is what she said about a couple of the episodes:

‘The two episodes of “The Fugitive Chronicles” directed by Jonathan Rudd were shot in Miami, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and ultimately Mallorca.  Very sexy!  The island of Mallorca is full of history, and also full of production activity courtesy of Palma Pictures, who hosted our imported crew for the occasion.  Over the course of our nine day shoot, Mallorca stood in for its neighbors Madrid, Malaga, and Gran Canaria, and even Sardinia, Italy.  We shot in cemeteries and swimming pools, and drove Porsches in car chases and catamarans into the sunset-And of course, we ‘caught’ two fugitives in the process.’

Amazing! This sounds more like a James Bond film-Porsches and catamarans in to the sunset-not too shabby and check out the weather in that pic!

I really can’t wait to see it! Oh AND don’t forget everyone that ‘Neighbourhood Watched’ our 4 part series on the life of housing officers and their tenants is going on on Tuesday 4^th August, 10.35 on BBC1! Pen it in your diaries!

Love Fi

Xxx

27 July 2009

And I’m discovering there’s not a lot we can do about it…

Building contractors have free reign to make as much noise as they need, between the hours of 9 and 6- and as this noise is ‘transient’ apparently in the council’s eyes there is no problem. So for the next 6 months, as we shout at each other across the desks, we can console ourselves with that fact….no?

Honestly we are battling the odds around here, with that and Swine flu, it’s a challenge to simply make a phone call at times! But- of course- we soldier on!

With Locked Up finishing and Fugitive and Breakout heading for the edit everyone is busy rushing between here and the west end, desperately avoiding contact with any ‘Swiney’ people.  We had to say bye to Dave our runner last week, after a long time relying on him, well for everything really! Bye Dave:-(

but at least one thing- it is sort of sunny (for now anyway)

Luv

Fi

xx

One of the best things about writing the RAW blog is finding out the best/worst/most interesting bits of the shoots that are going on while we, in the London office battle heat exhaustion and then torrential downpours.  Sorry to talk about the weather but really, it has been crazy!

Tim Riding sent this pic from one of the most recent shoots for Breakout. The team visited Ohio and Tennesee and saw this sign in the window of a shop on Kingston- I thought, ‘I just have to know more about this place!’  Then I realized that if a place needs to tell everyone this extravagant (!?) news then perhaps there is nothing else to know!

Actually Tim had a great time filming the interviews there, Seeing the Smoky Mountains, meeting interesting people and Sleeping in a four poster bed so big there was a ladder to climb onto it! – very glamorous Tim!

Everyone at headquarters London have their development heads on, so with ideas buzzing around and the threat of the dreaded swine flu things are interesting! Apparently in London, the flu is now epidemic…. So the cold that has been swiftly moving through the office may well be... dun dun duuuun ...  swine flu!

Get well soon everyone!

Fi

xx

This time I thought I would collate some exciting tales from abroad!

Martin Pupp on of our AP’s on Locked Up has just returned from India (Hiya!) where they overcame the challenges of illness and constantly getting lost, to successfully film the hippies on the beach in Goa, skip the first part, that sounds like fun!

Leah Cooper has just returned (Hoorah!) from Jamaica where she was helping the Episode 11 Locked Up team set up their shoot. She said the most challenging part was building a prison from scratch in a disused warehouse in the centre of Kingston-where the guys (Steve and Ahsan) are filming now! Can’t wait to see it!

The Breakout team are always here and there between Canada and London, so the office has become one big conference call! Three way script meetings are now a day to day occurrence-and we’ve had to put up clocks to show the different time zones, (yep, we are SO international!!)

The Fugitive team are soon to be losing Bart from his permanent New York residence (don’t worry I know he won’t stay away long!) as he is returning at the end of next week- so I’ll ask him all about living the Nooo Yoik life! Bart- Don’t forget to bring an I Love NY T-shirt and some Salt Water taffy, Hersheys bars ……..

Oh and did I mention that Battlefront has also been nominated for Banff and two RTS education awards, no? Well, fingers crossed for those!

So what’s going on? More like what isn’t going on? I feel like we need three blogs really as RAW is super international at the moment and with Battlefront winning an Emmy (had to get that in there!) for best Digital project, well it’s a great place to be.

What else…? The team in Canada are working on ‘Breakout’, the escape series we’re making. They’ve been visiting real-life death row prisoners who have plotted audacious escapes!

The New York office is in full swing, working on ‘Fugitive’, the prisoner on the run series for A&E. They’ve been setting up car chases through the city (check out the pics!).
Locked Up Abroad is already up to programme 13 - with teams enjoying fun in the sun, in Jamaica and India- (not its hard work really it is! ;-) So actually, it is all go.

Base-camp in London has been cloudy this week, but don’t think we’re missing out on the fun! …We had real hardships and trials and tribulations- the dishwasher and internet broke, if you can cope with that- you can cope with anything!