none
none
Ian's involvement with the moving image can be traced right back to school days. With two friends he formed Treble Eight Films (treble for the three friends and eight for the 8mm format film they used). T8F made several short films including Boys Will Be Boys which achieved a special mention and third place in the Northern Cine Alliance Awards.
none
Professionally, Ian moved on to 16mm to create the launch film for the Maelstrom sports car then made the jump to video and the professional U-format, producing films for Leyland Vehicles and the American company Cooperheat.

As a result of the standard those films attained, Ian became a qualified member of the British Kinematograh Sound and Television Society, the association representing British producers and directors.

Ian moved to the Middle East as analogue video gave way to digital, his output including promotional films for governments, vehicle importers, oil companies and exhibition organisers.
During that period Ian created a film covering the preparation for the Kingdom's first desert rally with HRH Prince Saud, advanced audio visual programmes for Aramco using twelve projectors. promotional shorts for the Ferrari importer in the Sultanate of Oman and exciting coverage of several AutoSolo race events held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

In all those instances Ian was not just the producer and director, he was also scriptwriter, cameraman and editor!

Also in Saudi Arabia, at the time when he was Director of Operations, Ian created a lavish event including a film projected on the outside of the exhibition centre to celebrate the silver anniversary of ACE exhibitions
ACE 25
A business celebrating its 25th, or silver anniversary in a young country is quite an achievement, so the owner of ACE Exhibitions, Muwafak Al Harithy gave Ian a challenging brief.
He wanted a very special silver themed event to which he could invite heads of state, members of the Saudi royal family and a host of business associates.

Click the button to run video

Muwafak also demanded that the celebration should coincide with the Saudi International Motor Show and include a film and fireworks.

There should be a real sense of occasion and the film should not only show the roots of the company but also subliminally suggest that the country's growth had actually been underpinned and driven by ACE. He also decreed that the film should be exciting to watch. By that token the film could not be screened in a darkened area of the exhibition centre.

A demanding brief under any circumstances but an even greater challenge because the exhibition centre was located right on the flight path to Jeddah International Airport so fireworks would be impossible. It was a seemingly out of the question brief for an impossible task.
Thinking out of the box, Ian created a memorable event that ticked all of the owner's boxes - even the fireworks.

At the end of the last day of the motor show the centre would be emptied and everyone reassembled outside on the plateau where a big screen would have been affixed over the building entrance.

Ian had scripted and directed a film that delivered the ACE message and this was projected onto the big screen, at the end of which vulcan flame throwers on the roof were set to vibrant music which led in to fireworks cascading down across the entire frontage in a silver curtain to top off the silver anniversary.

Ian got a standing ovation after the film and Muafak got his fireworks - cascading down rather than up into the sky!
Returning to the UK, Ian created and organised the media launch of the Keating Supercar which featured a launch film directed and filmed by Ian leading directly into a dynamic reveal and attracted specialist journalists from Russia, France, Germany and South Africa.

By then, Ian was getting a little long in the tooth so took a step back and retired. But not the type of guy to retire and watch TV all day, Ian set up a film unit.
A not-for-profit retirement project, Old Man Film was originally set up as a self funded project to make one short film but developed to make full length narrative feature films setting up an in-house film school to make that possible. OMF features have won numerous international awards and raised thousands of pounds for charity.

OMF is a big story so click the button to visit the dedicated site for full background, filmography and trailers.