TV Angela's Great Night Out

Tonight (Friday) sees the premier of Great Night Out, ITV1’s big new prime time comedy following the fortunes of four men in Stockport.

As we reported earlier this week, it also marks the producing debut of Welshpool woman Angela Sinden, 34, who has gained vast experience in the TV world previously on shows including Shameless and Coronation Street.

Tonight she will be watching Great Night Out closely along with millions of others and urges the Welshpool area to tune in!

We caught up with Angela earlier this week who shares her incredible career path which has taken her from growing up in Oldford to working on one of TV’s most exciting new programmes.

Where are you originally from?

Welshpool born and bred. Spent my first 11 years living on Oldford estate and they were some of my happiest years yet. It was very different then to how it is now, any other Oldford kids form the 80’s would agree. Then went away to study in Salford uni, living in Manchester for six or seven years, before finally giving in and moving to London.

Where do you live now?

I live in Central London and work at Hat Trick Productions which is based in Camden.

Take us through your career?

I studied for HND and BA Hons Media & Performance at Salford University. Jim Sturgess was a classmate of mine and Peter Kay completed the same course a few years before. Saying that, I’ve come across many people in the industry that didn’t go into higher education and have done just as well, sometimes better – for having that headstart on others and getting through the trainee stage whilst they’re still very young.

My first job out of university was at the Manchester Film Office. I facilitated productions shooting in the Manchester area; helping them find locations, crew and facilities. I did some running jobs during this time at the weekends or on days off to start accumulating experience on set. When a new big production was looking for a base in Manchester and said they’d be there pretty much all year I decided to jump ship and handed them my CV to take the step into my first full production. It turned out to be Shameless. I was there from the day dot and so I got to see all the hard work and effort that went into producing a mammoth show like that – all good grounding for when problems now pop up in my current role, chances are I saw similar problems or worse being dealt with during my time at Shameless. I started off as production runner, that lasted two weeks before they asked me to take the role as Production Secretary instead. That’s a really handy role if you have an interest in scripts as you get to read each new draft that comes in and see all the development work as it happens. You’re also there for most of the casting and pre-production work, whereas if you have a set-based job say working as a spark for example, you only get to be around for the time of shooting rather than being there for the pre-production and post-production time too.

I spent five years at Shameless and worked my way up from Production Secretary to Assistant Script Editor to Script Editor. There’s little formal training as such once you’re on a job or working for a particular company, so you have to try and learn your craft on the job. Much like an apprenticeship, I guess. I was lucky to be taken under the wing of the then Script Editor, John Griffin. He went on to become Producer and then Executive Producer. He’s been my mentor and friend since then. I also spent a year on Coronation Street as Script Editor which was a lot of fun but immensely hard work because it’s a machine that churns our great television without ever stopping. I’d recommend spending time on a soap to anyone that wants to hone their craft, it teaches you great skills about time and stress management!

After making the decision not to stay at Shameless I joined Hat trick five years ago as a Development Producer. The role of development producer is to source ideas from writers or come up with them yourself and then add a suitable writer to take it through to script stage. Once you have a script it’s much like any other production/manufacture industry - you take the script which is essentially your prototype to various distributors (in the case of TV, the broadcasters) and ask them if they’d like to commission you to produce that product for them. So it requires persuasion skills as well as creative ones. The last show I developed before Great Night Out was a half hour comedy for BBC3 called Some Girls. I worked with the writer on the first three scripts and we also cast it and then sold it to BBC3. Once it went into production I moved across to focus on Great Night out and produced this show instead of that one.

How tough/fun was producing your first programme and how long did it take to film?
In short, it was VERY tough but LOTS of fun.

The casting process was lots of fun; that started before we even had a director on-board. I spent a few weeks with our casting director up in Manchester meeting groups of funny men for a few weeks. Spending each day laughing for a good amount of time is not a bad way to spend a cold wet January in work.

But as we got towards filming the work days naturally got longer.  Pre-production ran from January through to March. We shot from the end of March through to the end of June. The post-production ran from July through to October.

Some days we’d spend all day shooting in a pub, other days we’d be out on a muddy farm waiting for the rain to stop so we could get some shots done in between downpours. But obviously, coming from Wales I had good training for both settings! The glamour side of TV only happenings when you finally get to have a screening of your show or go to the odd TV awards night. The rest of the time a typical shoot day runs like this:

6am Get up. Answer any emails that came in overnight (that does happen!)

6:30am Set off for work. Most sets or bases were between half an hour to an hour away from central London.

7am Get to base and have breakfast and check that there are no problems that have cropped up overnight. Problems can range from: ‘the sunshine we were due to have for this summer’s day scene has been replaced by a few-hour thunderstorm’ to ‘out main actor in this scene has had an allergic reaction to his mates cat this morning and now has a swollen face – he’s due on camera on half an hour’. It’s worth noting here that if you work in a department such as Hair, make-up or wardrobe, your daily call is even earlier than this. Most start their work day at 06:30 at least, so they’re the ones that really pull the short straw!

8am This is the time that we first start shooting on camera for the day. We shoot through till 7pm.

7pm All the cast head back to the base camp to have their make-up, wigs and costumes removed and get back into their civies. Once again, make-up, hair and wardrobe pull the short straw because their day still isn’t over, they now have to wash, dry and iron all the costumes, wigs etc ready for use again the next day. The other departments (such as art dept and props) also have to replenish everything that’s been used during the day and reset the sets to look like they’ve never been used. So even though this is officially our end time, the work day isn’t really over. Emails, debriefs, looking at problems for the next day’s filming etc.

Between 20:30 – 21:30, get home, quickly have something to eat. Answer emails, check scripts for tomorrow’s scenes.

11.30pm Get to bed on time if I’m lucky!

And we shoot in 11-day fortnights, so one week I’ll have one day off, the next week I get two days off. Though, as this was my first production they never really felt like days off. I spent them checking scripts, watching the first cuts of edited scenes and episodes, going to more castings and just generally worrying that I’d missed something huge somewhere and waiting for it to all come crashing down around me! But there was a lot of support around me to make sure that didn’t happen. We all have to start somewhere and have our first time doing a particular role, Hat Trick are a fantastic company and were never going to set me up to fail, so I had a lot of support and experienced people around me to show me the ropes. But essentially, we were shooting a comedy – so the main aim each day was to make sure we’re going to make people laugh, I’m never going to find a way to complain about that as my job! I’ve had my sights set on this job since I was in school, I’m just really pleased that even though I was never the world’s best student I kept striving for it and achieved it in the end. I’m very lucky to have found a job that I love doing every day. Even the 15-hour ones.

The only part I didn’t enjoy was that split second when the alarm goes off and I’d think ‘that can’t be right, I’ve only just closed my eyes’.

Was the show your idea?
Unfortunately not but I wish I’d thought of it! It seems almost obvious now, like someone should’ve done it before. I think it’s a world and a situation that we all know very well; it’s instantly recognisable and relatable.  There’ll be people watching at home thinking ‘I’m sure this character/story/pub is based on me and mine’ – but honestly, it’s not. Some of the lingo may seem very familiar but that’s as far as any similarities to real-life characters go. There’s a line in episode 1 where one character calls another ‘mouth’ – that does sound very Welshpool and makes me smile every time I hear it.

I am working on ideas of my own. But as I’ve no desire to ever write, I have to find the right writer and attach them to work on it. My predominant job though is to find ideas that exist already and get them quickly on to screen. I’m a producer, not a writer. My job would be highly frustrating if I wanted to be the other side of the camera or be the one with the pen in my hand. I’m happy recognising those great skills in others and getting them to do the hard work!

Great Night Out is shown tonight at 9pm on ITV1.

SET PICTURES courtesy of Mick Pantaleo