Kicking the Tyres

As the year draws to a close & a new one approaches full of possibilities & dynamic change, now is the time to tee up a ‘Kicking the Tyres’ session for nascent, stuck & uncertain projects.

Here’s some feedback from the last session I delivered, from a brand content creator:
“Adam understood our new concept instantly. Within minutes we were testing assumptions & pressure-checking the creative foundations. Adam is a giant in his field – decades at the cutting edge of commissioning, digital innovation & audience strategy. He sees the creative, the commercial & the structural layers all at once.
If you’ve got a project that needs clarity, challenge or momentum, I cannot recommend Kicking the Tyres highly enough.”

This session was focused on a cutting-edge vertical fiction/mobile microdrama offering for internal & external comms.

You may be a producer, executive, director, creative director or founder (as in this case) in TV, film, digital, publishing or campaigning. You are leading a project: one you devised, inherited or are tasked to deliver. But it is just not landing, moving or selling the way it should.

If you need a boost of energy, clarity & a sharp sense of whether & how it can really work, I can help.

After this session you will:
•         Know what’s working, what’s not & why
•         See the gaps/risks/hidden opportunities
•         Have a focused action plan you can implement immediately
•         Feel confident about whether to push forward, pivot or park it.

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂’𝗹𝗹 𝗴𝗲𝘁:
•         An intensive 1-day session focused on your project/goals
•         Strategic clarity aligned with your creative intentions/business needs
•         A bespoke step-by-step action plan leading to real progress

There are still a couple of January slots & plenty in Feb

𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗺𝗲?
I bring decades of experience as a producer/commissioning editor/creative director, with 6 BAFTAs, an Emmy, RTS Innovation Award & 90 international awards. I have pioneered digital/multiplatform content and know how to build audiences, engagement & community.

KICKING THE TYRES

“Adam has that rare blend of creativity, business insight and a deep subject knowledge. What he doesn’t know about multiplatform and digital content isn’t worth knowing.” Global CEO

“It was brilliant, really provocative and opened up great areas. You communicate in a really amazing mixture of gentleness, wonder and forthrightness – it’s really cool” MD

“Adam was patient, sensitive and yet very honest with us, taking us through a thorough development strategy. His experience and clarity are just what we needed. It was an inspirational session.” MD

GUARANTEE:
Do the work & don’t get results – I’ll refund you. No drama. No fine print.

If you’ve been struggling or putting it off, this is your moment to get your project really moving.

DM me or mail adam@arkangel.co.uk to discuss a slot and get your 2026 off to a more positive kind of start…

NEXTWAVE Digital-First Production summit

[1st Nov 2025] This weekend saw NEXTWAVE breaking on the banks of the Saale at Halle, Germany 🇩🇪 a 1-day Digital-First Production summit to bring discussion & exploration of Digital First Content & Social Video to the heart of mainland Europe. It was organised by Documentary Campus , reflecting our championing of Digital within the mix of Documentary and our progressive approach to staying fully aligned with the realities of today’s market. The summit was expertly curated by Justin Crosby of TellyCast – the content industry podcast . The European broadcasters from Helsinki to Rome were deeply engaged with what was covered, ranging from The New Documentary Landscape (which I chaired, spotlighting Zandland, Quintus & Channel 4’s Untold online strand) to How To Launch & Build a Successful Factual Channel on YouTube by Rob Wilson of vidIQ . More to follow in 2026…

Special thanks to my old colleague at C4 Janine Thomas , Gerrit Kemming & Josh Reynolds for a sparky conversation about the future of docs; Justin Crosby for a brilliant programme & selection of speakers; Nils Franck for being a dynamic digital champion on Documentary Campus Masterschool this year; my colleague Ingrid Hübscher for excellent organisation of this landmark day; and Donata Von Perfall and Dr. Patrick Hörl for being so squarely behind the event and the direction of travel.

Documentary Campus Masterschool pitching day

[1st Nov 2025] This weekend’s Documentary Campus Masterschool pitching day was a perfect illustration of the dynamism and uplifting energy of independent hashtag#documentary hashtag#filmmaking. It would have been great to bottle that pure vibe and send out crates of it far & wide to refresh anyone who is flagging or struggling right now.

Among the nascent films – from as far afield as Ukraine and Ireland, Italy and Norway, Cambodia and the USA – it was a particular pleasure to now have digital-first projects in the mix and also to have alternative funders (like Crowdfunder ) amidst the decision-makers and broadcasters who generously made the effort to travel to the beautiful city of Halle and join in with enthusiasm.

We are working very hard at Doc Campus to be fleet of foot and fully aligned with the realities of the market as it is now. That’s why we followed up the pitching with Next Wave, a full day of exploring the digital dimension of Documentaries and the new possibilities emerging… 

AI and Factual Television 3: Innovation & Creativity

Drones in Forbidden Zones (Channel 4)

When drone technology emerged I commissioned a series for Channel 4 from the nascent Little Dot Studios eventually titled ‘Drones in Forbidden Zones‘. I had noticed that films of pure spectacle did well on YouTube, such as a camera simply attached to the front car of a new rollercoaster ride. So the brief was simple: POV spectacle films shot using drones – anything that could be shot from a helicopter or a Steadicam was not to be included. The flight itself should be a visceral delight in itself. The films were largely shot flying through narrow spaces in difficult to access places and higher than human height.

In other words, they used the new technology in ways that emphasised what could be done now that couldn’t be done before.

In 2009 I commissioned the multiplatform half of a Channel 4 series called ‘The Operation: Surgery Live‘ (Windfall Films: my co-commissioner (TV) was David Glover) – it was one of the first TV shows ever (possibly the first) to use Twitter as an integral part of the editorial. Budding surgeons have always learned by watching experienced doctors at work – that’s why it’s called an operating ‘theatre’. In these programmes the viewers were given the opportunity to learn by asking experienced surgeons about what they were doing live via Twitter. In the UK, Live TV is anything up to 15 minutes behind reality due to the demands of television regulation. For this series the delay was reduced to a minimal 8 seconds to enable viewers’ questions to be put to the surgeons – who were doing all sorts, from open-heart surgery to awake brain surgery – after a minimal delay. The show had to explain what a ‘hashtag’ was as Twiiter was so unmainstream then. Tweeters in the USA were asking what the heck this #SLive thing was.

In other words, it used the new technology in ways that emphasised what could be done now that couldn’t be done before.

That is where we need to be for AI. There is a lot of fear, anxiety, bullshit, hyperbole, depression, catastrophising and band-wagon-jumping going on right now around TV and AI. Making things cheaper and faster and with less people is of little interest to true filmmakers and creatives.

This is the time to ask what the new technology enables us to do in film, television, content, digital interactivity and media now that couldn’t be done before.

The Operation: Surgery Live (Channel 4)

Quotation capturing the essence of the digital age

 

“sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together”

Marilyn reading the best book ever written

This quotation is often attributed to Marilyn Monroe but that seems to be a typical web copycat quote error. Marilyn was pretty articulate and said plenty of interesting things but nobody seems to have a source for this. It derives from a longer quote:

“I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right. You believe lies so that you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”

I like the last line because it captures how, when established institutions and practices fall apart due to the disintermediation made possible by the internet, new opportunities emerge in the gaps between the crumbling edifices.

Marilyn thinking about Ulysses

 

4 reasons to go see Men, Women & Children

Jason Reitman, good pedigree

So it’s that time of the year again – my first BAFTA viewing of the season. To get things off to a strong start I went to see Jason Reitman’s Men Women & Children. He was at the screening (we crossed paths at the door of the Gents in the Ham Yard Hotel in Soho – I’ve seen him once before a couple of years ago at a screening of Up in the Air – he’s the son of Animal House producer, Ivan Reitman). Also present in the immaculate new screening room were stars Ansel Elgort (The Fault in our Stars) and Kaitlyn Dever (Bad Teacher), plus producer Helen Estabrook, all interviewed after the movie by Jason Solomons (more comfortable than incisive like that old jumper with the paint spots on it).

Ansel Elgort & Kaitlyn Dever connecting (without phones)

I was going to ask director Jason Reitman why he had decided on a female English voice-over (Emma Thompson, who sounded like she didn’t really understand the American words she was being asked to say about sports and stuff) but the fella before me asked that one so I had to improvise. First I asked him why he used a voice-over narration at all (and quite a lot of it), and then I asked whether he had gone to Framestore for the space shots as a no-brainer in the wake of Gravity (it’s wonderful to see a London institution in such a dominant global position).

On the way out I had a chat with Ansel Elgort about selfies and who took the photos in the movie story of his screen mum and her lover. I thought it was a Judas scenario – who is narrating when he’s alone in his torment? – but Ansel reckoned the obnoxious couple took a photographer along to the wedding proposal, a “cheesy” act. I’m not entirely convinced but maybe that happens in the good ol’ US of A. He has 4 million Instagram followers so what do I know?

So the reasons to go see the film are:

Rosemarie DeWitt DeLish

1. Rosemarie DeWitt – I fancy her something rotten, very distinctive nose. She looks oddly like Davina McCall (who I bought a coke a few years ago at a BAFTA nominees party in Marylebone). Probably first noticed her in Rachel Getting Married and loved her in the delightful Your Sister’s Sister.

In 1990 Voyager 1 captured this image of Earth from 4 billion miles away

2. Carl Sagan’s words – My friend Doug Miller is always going on about Carl Sagan and he’s a man of taste. His taste is well proven in this movie as the voice-over of a Carl Sagan DVD provides the philosophical perspective in this story. It’s the “Pale Blue Dot” speech from Cosmos which says that us humans are basically a race of jumped-up monkeys floating in the blackness on an insignificant lump of rock – and that’s why we need to be kind to one another.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

3. Mobile phones – it really draws your attention to how much we all use them, especially while walking around.

For fuck’s sake say something!

I took this picture a couple of weeks ago in The Wolesey – these people never came off their phones in over an hour and hardly exchanged a word. One of the few things that sticks with me from Dr Susan Greenfield’s slightly odd book Tomorrow’s People is the new state of mind which sees us regularly living in two places at once thanks to this technology.

4. The Internet – this is probably the first movie I’ve seen that has a serious stab at examining what the internet is doing to us – through blogs, porn, social media, games et al – and how we connect in all regards these days.