Something For The Weekend: behind the scenes

One of the shows I used to work on regularly as a cameraman was Something For The Weekend, a Sunday morning magazine-style chat and cookery show for BBC2. I’d always enjoyed watching the show before I started working on it and it’s been one of my favourite jobs despite the 5:30am start, which probably seems like a lie-in for the folk who work on breakfast telly.

There’s a really friendly atmosphere on the studio floor between presenters, crew and production, and I’ve known chef Simon Rimmer for years since Great Food Live for UKTV Food, so it was definitely one of those jobs that hardly felt like ‘work’. Another bonus is the fact that it’s live, which always makes things a lot more fun.

I got to shoot publicity stills for the show in recent years (a selection are in my portfolio) and on those days grabbed some behind the scenes shots too, just for myself really. Those are the first few shots below.

Then I got into using apps like Hipstamatic and Instagram on my phone and started using that during the rehearsals to catch arty shots; there’s 7 or 8 minutes of hanging around between recipe rehearsal set-ups so I’d snap photos for fun. As we got closer to the last episode I started taking more and posting some to Twitter for the fans; I find behind-the-scenes photography fascinating, and on a show like SFTW there’s always something going on somewhere.

The atmosphere of the whole show is quite different to most other things I work on – we’re all tired but we have to be alert so the art of preparing and serving the perfect coffee from the shiny espresso machine in reception is prized amongst runners and crew alike; as we rehearse, the light through those huge windows transforms in just an hour or so from broody darkness to the piercingly bright golden glow of sunrise. It’s just a great space to take photos in.

So to commemorate the final show, and also just because these have been collecting in my hard drive for the last four years and they wanted to be seen, here’s a hundred or so of my favourite snaps from behind the scenes of Something For The Weekend, presented in roughly chronological-ish order, culminating in a set from the last show on March 18th, 2012 (you can click here to skip straight to that bit).

I should add that none of these are ‘official’ snaps; I simply love documenting what goes on behind the scenes in my job and I thought fans of the show might appreciate these particular pics now it’s finished.

Thanks for visiting, and if you watched the show, thank you for watching!

The last ever show

The last show wasn’t a great deal different to make than any other show, except there were a lot more studio guests watching behind the scenes including former producers, executives and friends of the show. There were a lot of cameras and smartphones out snapping pictures throughout the day, and I came away with around a hundred photos via Instagram; here’s some of my favourites:

And with that, Something For The Weekend came to the end of it’s 5+ year run! We had a lot of fun making it, and I hope you enjoyed watching it and flicking through these snaps.

Thanks for reading.