Award nomination for farm show that carried on despite lockdown
A YORKSHIRE-BASED TV production firm has been nominated for a national award for its work in ensuring filming could go ahead during lockdown for the Channel 5 show Springtime on the Farm.
Daisybeck Studios, which is based in Leeds, was told the show would have to be cancelled when the Government announced the national lockdown.
The team had 24 hours to come up with a way they could continue production so the hard work of the cast and crew had already put into the show wouldn’t be wasted.
The company, led by series producer Richard Mortimer and production executive Sophie Macfarlane, which films the show on location
at Cannon Hall Farm, near Cawthorne in South Yorkshire, has been nominated for Best Lockdown Programme in the Broadcast TV Awards.
The programme was about to start its third series highlighting the work of the Nicholson family and other farmers across the country at
the start of the busiest time of the year when the lockdown was announced. Four episodes had been in the planning for months and a lot of the back stories to the programme had already been filmed.
Rob and Dave Nicholson, who run the open farm with their family, had begun filming their own content for social media long before the lockdown and so the producers provided them with broadcast quality cameras and online coaching to help them gather the necessary shots to be able to complete stories already filmed.
However, that wasn’t enough and the biggest challenge of all was how to get contributions from presenters Helen Skelton and Adam Henson, who had been due to spend the week at Cannon Hall Farm to produce the show.
Daisybeck developed a method using smartphones and supporting kit which was sent to the presenters’ homes – Helen just outside Leeds and Adam in the Cotswolds – and also to the farm. Mr Mortimer said: “It was a huge gamble. We hadn’t tried the technology in the real world – only between the team and in theory.”