Film Crews in the Lancaster and Morecambe Area

“Apparently in the Lancaster and Morecambe area, you’re never more than six feet away from a film crew.”

Whilst possibly a *slight* exaggeration to suggest that film crews are as plentiful as all that, it’s certainly true that there seem to be an increasing number of them in the area lately.

Whilst up at Williamson Park they’re filming scenes for Peaky Blinders, down on the shore they’re filming for a TV series called The Bay as well as a new Netflix original series starring James Nesbitt and featuring, amongst other notable names, Eddie Izzard.

In the city itself they’ve played host to film crews from Most Haunted, the Antiques Roadshow, a documentary on castles, Paddington 2, Get Santa, a documentary about the slave trade and a documentary about canals. I seem to recall there was also something with Rupert Grint in it, but goodness knows what it was.

There was one notable occasion when I bumped into Gordon Ramsey in a nightclub that has since been knocked down (probably for unrelated reasons). He was as unashamedly offensively vocal as you would expect him to be, particularly after a few drinks, in front of a small audience of his friends/colleagues on a night out after filming. Ah… memories.

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Market Trading

I felt like I was on “The Apprentice”! I got into the city centre around 8am. Which is early for me to be in town, but it wasn’t early for all the experienced trades-people. They’d been there since six, fitting their stalls together, setting up their tables and displaying their wares. They all had vans or trailers, I had to borrow the boot space of a kind volunteer and their car. The very kind owner of the Little Sweet Shop Company loaned me a spare gazebo, which he even helped me to set up too. What a nice man! Once the gazebo was up I then spent about half an hour or so putting up my fold out table, getting out my stock, setting it up and generally faffing around with the placement and display. Which I kept on tweaking throughout the entire day. I watched the early morning stream of pedestrians go back and forth. An average of 23 people passed in front of the stall every single minute in the morning, that definitely increased as the day went on. It was Saturday after all. Soon town was heaving with shoppers and students and every one in between. There must have been thousands of people going past over the course of the day. The early morning shoppers weren’t up for browsing or deviating from their plans, they clearly had somewhere to be or something specific to buy and they had eyes only for that. Everyone else was probably still at home having a weekend lie in. It wasn’t until lunchtime that the browsers emerged and saw the new stall in Lancaster market. People really seemed to like my “geek chic” merchandise, and a lot of people didn’t realise that I’d actually designed everything myself. One browser asked me “do you do any One Direction t-shirts?”, alas, I’m afraid not. It was a great day, chatted to a lot of people, gave out many, many business cards and leaflets. Saw plenty of people that I knew and many more that I didn’t, the weather was pleasant too – which helped. Eventually the day ended and I packed everything back up again, happily there was a lot less to put away. If I had a van, and a gazebo, and I could drive, and I had free time – then I’d definitely do it again. As it stands though, I’m not going to appear regularly, but I’ll let you know if I’ve got any special market days planned. The next time I’ll be behind a stall will be at the Kendal comic art festival on the 18th and 19th October. 🙂

“Getting Seen” Workshop Coming Soon

The Lancaster Guardian this Thursday ran a little article about an upcoming business support workshop entitled “Getting Seen”. It’s going to be at The Storey Institute in Lancaster on Thursday 13th February, if you think your business needs a little marketing boost then it might be worth investing in attending this course. It’s rather pricey at £150, but it does take all day, you get to choose two out of four of the workshops on offer, plus you get refreshments, plus you get a corporate photo head shot that you can use in your marketing literature, or you can get a cartoon drawn version. Or if you’ve got time, probably both! PLUS they’re also offering follow on support after the day is over.

If you’re interesting in finding out more or booking to join then you can sign up here: http://gettingseenmasterclass.eventbrite.co.uk/

Why do I mention all this? You ask. Well, because who do think will be doing all the cartoon avatar drawing? Ah, now you get it! Sketch you later…