In 2001 an 11kg gold cauldron was pulled out of a lake in southern Bavaria. We follow the story of this cauldron to The Nazi stronghold of Wewelsburg Castle, spiritual home of the SS. Discovering who made it and why. Through the cauldron we uncover the secrets behind the nazi’s belief in the occult.

Welsh Poet Laureate Ifor Ap Glyn goes on a journey of discovery to find out how the toilet developed. From the first water closet belonging to  Queen Elizabeth I  to the electric washing toilets of Japan, we see how our ancestors coped with their waste and how the toilet could evolve into a box that converts poo into energy.

The Hairy ones tour the country meeting their food heroes and cooking up British delicacies in their Best of British Kitchen.
6 x 45′ (of 30) BBC2 and 3 x 59′ (of 10) BBC2 Prime time.

TwoFour productions for Channel 4
What happens when an average family is confronted with every high tech gadget imaginable? How will they relate to their high tech gadgets? Which bit of tech will they like and use most. Strangely its not what you think. My episode is on Sunday 26th Feb at 7pm http://www.homeofthefuture.tv/

Sadly Confidential is no more. These behind the scenes films gave the fans another hour of the good doctor immediately after the main episode went out.

This unassuming little film for C5 did pretty damned well. It got pick of the day in many newspapers and beat Channel 4′s Inside natures giants, with a 4.6% share and nearly a million viewers.

I just tried to buy some HDCam Sr stock. What is usually expensive but easy just got nasty. Due to the Tsunami in Japan, Sony’s tape factory in Sendai was destroyed.
“We don’t know how long it will take to resume production,” said Sue Tanaka, a Sony spokeswoman in Tokyo. Sony is still cleaning out the mud that covered much of the ground floor of the factory and hasn’t begun to evaluate damage to machinery. It will be months rather than weeks until the factory is back to full strength, she said.
So no new tape for a while, possibly a long while. So tape stock prices have more than doubled, that is if you can find any. Prices on ebay are silly, but who would buy tapes on ebay? now there are not many options. Broadcasters may even be forced to accept hard drives and quicktimes or go back to D5, yeuch.

I just got back from a 3 week trip to Gambella in western Ethiopia. The aim of the trip was to film the White Eared Kob migration, from South Sudan into the Gambella National Park in Ethiopia. This is Africa’s second biggest migration after the Wilderbeest migration between Tanzania and Kenya.  We estimate 1.2 million Kob make the migration with some groups being permanently resident in the Gambella national park.

We flew in a helicopter at dawn and dusk looking for the diverse range of wildlife in Gambella, and were rewarded by seeing thousands of Kob, large herds of Buffalo, Lechwe, Tiang and Lelwell’s Hartebeest. With no money for a gyro mount we took the doors off the Bell Longranger and shot handheld, on a pair of Sony Z1s and my Canon 550d. The motion of the chopper and general vibration meant a good stabilised lens was essential so I fitted a Canon EF 70-300 IS USM. The IS is a bit noisy but compared to the chopper that was nothing. The pictures were fanastic, the Is took the edge off the motion and shooting at 50fps gave everything a fluidity that I just could not get with the Z1. The only downside with the DSLR was overheating. The mornings were fine and cool and the camera behaved beautifully, but from 11 onwards with temperatures of 37 degrees in the shade, even with turning the camera off between shots the chip would overheat after about 5 minutes.

Ian is fast approaching 50 and is training for the iron man triathlon competition on a budget. His bike came from Amazon and he shuns running in case he injures himself and until a few months ago had never swum more than 50 meters. Yet he will soon face a 2.4 mile open water swim, followed by a 112 mile cycle ride immediately followed by a marathon.

To warm up he will be entering the Abu Dhabi trithlon on March 2011, so I am filming his experience on my trusty Canon 550d. The film should be shown at the Abu Dhabi film festival in spring.

JB gets unleashed in an hour long special. Walking up the volcano that caused all that trouble at the beginning of the year. It looks great and is a break from the normal presenter led vehicle, here Julia is coping with all that the climate can throw at her, in the most extreme walk yet.