JUNE 2025 - Filming Sam Thompson for UNICEF and Socceraid, 10's of millions of views on Social media
A wild week following Sam Thompson doing a marathon a day on foot and by bike from one stadium to the next stadium. Start at Arsenal in London and finishing at Old Trafford in Manchester.
A friend Vicci was doing the media bit for UNICEF and brought me on board to film as I have previously filmed with Comic Relief and Children in Need with Vicci and we get on well.
Here I would be in the lead vehicle filming Sam as he ran and cycled. The lead vehicle had a documentary crew in it. As these challenge events they raise usually a quarter to half the money from the actual event and through daytime TV, News and social media and the other half from a documentary that airs a week or so after the event. So it’s funny filming these as the documentary team are trying to film everything too. But I just film the occasional pieces throughout the day not absolutely everything like them and try stay out of their cameras way:) I then do a rough edit on my computer to pull out the better pieces etc and then upload to our base where a guy Matthew then edited social media posts from it, and Anna and Gabs would also edit things from it. I’d then film a bit, edit, upload repeat over and over all day. Then in the evening I’d have to quickly do a 5-10 minute highlight reel for Media. Such as News shows etc to use in their cycles. I would then do a longer edit (I say edit its just more a selection of shots and interviews for others to edit) for ITV This Morning that was featuring my footage each day. One of the days I also filmed a VT for This Morning with Ben Sheperd.
As well as myself and the Doc crew there was a social media team for UNICEF getting other pieces and then Sam had his own social guy Ted, ITV TM had a live crew each day and each person that met Sam to run with him for a short while usually also had their own media team:)
Was a fun week, couldn’t do it every week as 18 hr days take their toll. But worth it for the money raised and my overtime was my bit to charity:) A few pics of the day week below.
Some of the footage I took that was made into reels on instagram have individually had millions of views (one vid 8million) and probably 10’s of millions combined which is amazing.. This started the fund raising this week with £1.5m and by the end of it all as in documentary and football game it got up to £15m:)