In case you missed it - our show aired on 23rd January at 3pm, BBC1 - watch on catch up, but be kind!
John by this time was a little short of annual leave, and Liz was already minus 3 days so had to take unpaid leave, so we decided to work the Monday and set off at 5pm, planning to arrive at the hotel by midnight. Excitement was building - where were we going to see houses and what would they introduce us to in the local town. John's guess was Oban because the actual nearest town, Inverary, had recently been featured on the show. On the way up we speculated - John was thinking 'wouldn't it be great if they showed us the distillery?!'
We arrived at just gone midnight, to find the room key on the desk, and tiptoed to bed. The view in the morning from our hotel window was really rather lovely:
At breakfast the next morning, we met some of the production crew for the first time. Owen joined us for breakfast and then shot off ahead of us to get started. He sent us a text with where to meet them, and after a final preen so we looked our best, we set off to Oban for the day.
The glamour of 'factual entertainment' for the BBC is actually really down to earth. Many are outsourced to independent production companies and run by people who just 'get on with it'. The total production crew for the day consisted of: Owen the Assistant Producer (camera-man), Adrian the Sound Engineer (boom-man) and Jess the Researcher. The average age of everyone we had met in the whole process so far was about 30! Without exception, every single person we have spoken to on our journey has been absolutely amazing - positive, enthusiastic, professional and just lovely.
We met the guys at the carpark for the lifeboat station and met the lovely Adrian for the first time. Getting kitted out with microphones is an interesting procedure the first time you do it...or rather have it done to you! Adrian had a big satchel type bag with his recording equipment inside, a boom with a big, shaggy microphone on it, and a small toiletry style bag full of all sorts of nifty little bits required to hide tiny mics amongst clothing, including overcoming the challenges of various garments and weather conditions. He is an affable chap with a gentle lilt somewhere between Doncaster and Cheshire which put us immediately at ease. Wires were fed and transmitter packs connected and hooked to waistbands, and microphones situated. I got to clip mine to the front of my bra myself, thankfully.
First we filmed a lovely slot with the local RNLI lifeboat skipper, Alastair, and his lovely dog Flynn, (who has his own instagram page: LifeBoatDog) talking about the charity, its good works and what Oban is like to live in.
Then we went to Oban distillery to hear a bit more about the whisky and the history of this great place, oh and have a little drink. It was fun to watch Owen get so excited about his arty shot in the dark barrel store that he took a photo of the camera screen, using his phone, to share. We also had to film some background shots of us walking around the town and up and down the beach.
On this first day we had Owen with one camera doing all the work, so often were were asked to re-do the same questions whilst filming from different angles. He would focus on us, or the person we were talking to or all of us together, and sometimes we had to do our talking part with no responses, which felt quite unnatural. We're sure they'll splice and dice it to look seamless and not make us look like wallies!
As we were nearing completion for the day Owen spotted a better view over the beach and water and asked us to do one more walking shot. We trotted off and down the steps to the seaweed at the bottom. John hopped down and then tried to help me around the seaweed. There was a bit of slipping and sliding and squealing but we got there. John couldn't help but be reminded of the infamous scene of Neil Kinnock falling over on the beach. By the time we got back up to the street I realised that Adrian had probably heard the whole fuss through his headphones from our mics. Slightly embarrassing but he's probably heard worse.
We finished off the afternoon in Oban on our own and took in the local beach, grabbed amazing fish and chips from Oban Fish and Chip Shop, and a lovely spicy chilli hot chocolate from Oban Chocolate shop.
Oban is quite a big town, its population grows massively in the summer with tourism. We'd say it's quite a 'working town' and definitely the gateway to many of the islands on the Calmac ferries.
That evening before dinner Liz changed outfit, and we did our first filming where we were being asked questions! The crew had been slightly delayed in Oban filming random people for their thoughts on the town, so Liz had gotten a bit tipsy in the bar while we waited. We sat out in the hotel garden, Owen batting off the midges behind the camera, and Adrian's massive boom about 2 inches above our heads. Jess provided our eye line to the right of the camera and asked us the questions. What were our motivations to move to Scotland? What were we seeking? How do the kids feel about it? It will be interesting to see which answers they choose from each section of film, as of course there were three days of footage to cut down into just an hour of entertainment, giving the editors the very best chance of having quality stuff to choose from.
We all ate together in the hotel bar that evening and over a few beers we were soon chatting like we'd known each other longer than the 12 hours we had. It was great to hear about other programmes that the crew had worked on and what it's like to work with big celebrities, and travel the world! Towards the end of dinner the Production Director, Nicola, arrived. She had been out that day filming elsewhere but would be second camera tomorrow to make the whole process easier and quicker.
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