Short doc shot last year for @mcdonaldsuk and BBC Children in Need - @bbccin
It was BBC Children in Need 2025 at the weekend so felt like the right time to finally share.
McDonald’s staff across the country led fundraising efforts supporting youth work and young people.
With youth centres closing down and losing funding it’s pretty important that youth workers are backed and there to come alongside young people when they need it most.
A real privilege to spend time with Gina and the team at McDonald’s Dartford and a massive thank you to everyone involved!
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Client: @mcdonaldsuk & @bbccin
Agency: @redconsultancy
Prod: @detailfilms
Director: @benjipeterjackson
Producer: @helenlthomas
DOP: @willwarr
Cam Op: @nathancheong_
Assistant: @dcproductions__
Edit & Grade: @benjipeterjackson
A Portrait of Japan.
Across 2 weeks travelling around Japan I took over 50 individual portraits. Stopping people on the street, in shops, on boats, and asking if I could take their picture.
I’m not even sure where the idea came from or why I started, but there was something in overcoming that social awkwardness which stops us speaking to strangers.
It’s funny, before going people told me that the Japanese culture was incredibly reserved, that I would likely get told off for taking photos, and I did experience some of that. But once I started going up to people and asking to take their picture, the dynamic completely changed.
People’s faces would light up when they realised it was them I wanted to take a photo of. As I raised the camera to take the shot most would break into a wide smile, others, having been smiling, would go completely stone faced and serious, stoic perhaps? Plenty of peace signs were thrown up.
But nearly always, across language and cultural divides, a kind of conversation would follow and I’d walk away feeling a significance to the interaction; a breaking down of that social awkwardness, a stranger become familiar, relateable, human.
I’m not sure what this project was about but I guess that’s what I hope these portraits reflect; the stranger become familiar.
Something that seems increasingly important in today’s world.
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#japan #portraitphotography #fuji #streetphotography
Some frames from a brilliant trip with the @coastalexplorationcompany
Winding our way through the Norfolk salt marshes
See the last slide for some incredibly amateur bird spotting from @jwtbenn
Some favourite moments from the short doc I made last year, These Woods.
It tells the story of Merab and a girls basketball team in Kayole - one of Nairobi’s most dangerous informal settlements.
Full film in bio.
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Shot + edited by me
Sound mix + design by the brilliant @whsound_ldn
Excited to share that These Woods, a short doc I directed last year, has been shortlisted at this year’s @_onepointfour awards.
Filmed over two days in one of Nairobi’s most dangerous informal settlements, it tells the story of Merab and how basketball provides hope in the harshest of circumstances.
Full film on website and will share on here shortly.
Hope isn’t passive.
Campaign and brand film for Pale blue dot, a fund backing founders and businesses tackling our world’s biggest challenges.
Feels like an important time to be talking about hope and backing those bringing it to life.
Thank you to Pale blue dot and all the founders we got to meet and film with.
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Client: Pale blue dot
Prod: @candourcreative
Writer / Director: @benjipeterjackson
Producer: @zacharycrawley
DOP: @freddiereedphoto
Cam Op: @bendsaunders
1st AC: @thomasjamesinnes
Edit: @bendsaunders
