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ADRIAN
WOOD
A PROFILE
Adrian
Wood receiving his 2004 BAFTA Award
from TV Executive David Elstein for an
"outstanding contribution " to British
Television
Adrian
Wood's early work as a Film Researcher ranged from
the 'Benny Hill Show' to Jon Blair's Oscar-winning
documentary, 'Anne Frank
Remembered'.
Having
studied film and television production in
Guildford, England he entered television at ITN in
London in 1974. Working as a film librarian he felt
the search for film materials was much more
challenging and rewarding and so moved to Thames
Television. It was there he first worked on
documentary projects and developed a reputation for
his approach to research; it was there he
encountered the 'film as evidence' approach to
archive film.
Initially
working at Thames on a series examining Irish
history, 'The Troubles' he then continued his
research on a series examining American organised
crime, 'Crime Inc.'.
As
a freelance his work included the series' 'Scandal'
for Central TV, the award-winning series 'Stalin'
for Thames Television and the internationally
acclaimed BBC Television series 'The Nazis -- A
Warning From History'. Having experience of
research in the US, Europe and the Soviet Union, he
was asked to work on many of the other major
documentaries and documentary series of the
period.
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By
the early 1990s he had already proposed the
production of documentary films using original
colour archive material. It was seven years or so
later when he was working as the Director of
Archive Development at London-based tv production
and archive company TWI that this idea gained
support. It was there he raised the bar for all of
his profession with his personal mantra, "It's not
that it doesn't exist, it's just that we haven't
yet found it".
His
responsibilities at TWI also included consulting
with various sporting bodies, including the
International Olympic Committee, on the
preservation and restoration of their audio-visual
collections.
TWI
with Carlton TV persuaded ITV in the UK to
commission 'The Second World War in Colour'. When
first broadcast in 1999 it obtained a remarkable
42% audience share.
The
second series, 'Britain At War in Colour' focused
on Britain and the British experiences of the
Second World War. The series received the BAFTA
Award in 2000 for Best Factual Series.
The
material gathered by the team led to successive
productions looking at the British Empire; World
War II from the American perspective- 'The Perilous
Fight' and the Japanese perspective in a
co-production with NHK- 'Japan's War '. The latter
only became possible when in 2003, despite six
years of denial of the existence of colour footage
in Japan before 1945, Adrian found the evidence to
finally convince the Japanese that colour footage
did exist, long overlooked in Japanese archives and
homes. In May 2005, this work was honoured by FOCAL
International.
The
'in Colour' strand of programmes, besides winning a
BAFTA, have won a George Foster Peabody Award and
have been nominated for an Emmy for research in the
US. In the UK they have won four Indie Awards,
seven Royal Television Society Awards and a
Grierson Award for Best Documentary. In 2004 the
British Academy of Film and Television honoured him
with their Special Award for making an outstanding
contribution to British
television.
Adrian
left TWI in July 2004 following the completion of a
series co-produced with TVNZ and Film Australia on
the ANZAC experience of war, a film on Hitler's
Germany for British television and consulting on a
series looking at the Canadian experience during
WWII for CBC.
He
has co-authored three books on World War II as well
as writing articles on film history and his work in
this field. Adrian now acts as an independent media
consultant and is developing archive-based
documentary ideas.
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