Self-shooting producer director, BBC Studios NHU

Closing date: 9th April 2025

Salary: £46,500 - £70,700 depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.

Contract: This is a fixed-term, full-time role lasting 6 months.

Start date: Late May 2025 (Subject to Greenlight)

Interviews: Interviews will be held in person or via Zoom week commencing 14th April 2025.

We are looking for an experienced and enthusiastic self-shooting producer director (SSPD) with observational documentary experience to join the Big Cats 24/7 team.

BBC Studios’ Natural History Unit (NHU) is the leading producer of wildlife programming, creating award-winning content with a world class reputation. Our output ranges from ambitious landmarks (Mammals, Green Planet and Planet Earth III) to children’s programming (Go Wild and Andy’s Adventures), as well as ground-breaking travel, adventure, formatted, presenter led and event programming such as The Year The Earth Changed for Apple TV+ and feature documentaries like Lion: The Rise and Fall of the Marsh Pride for BBC.

Big Cats 24/7 follows individual big cats (lion, leopard, cheetah) around the clock in one of the wildest places on earth – the Okavango Delta in Botswana. It’s an immersive natural history series that blends premium behaviour-led cinematography, observational documentary and character led narratives. Captured in real time, our SSPD will follow our long lens witness camera operators, scientists and naturalists as they try to find, track and understand the drama taking place in the lives of our big cat families.

The SSPD will be highly creative and organised, with excellent sync-based storytelling skills, visual flair, and ability to go on location for extended periods of time. Successful candidates will have a proven track record of effectively filming and producing presenters and / or on-screen contributors on location. They will have a clear and committed understanding of the constraints of budget and be a very good team player.

The role includes involvement in research, pre-production and filming on location. There is no edit role associated with this position.

Responsibilities

• To work effectively to ensure all content is thoroughly researched and meets the BBC’s editorial standards.
• To plan strategically to ensure editorial aspirations align with budgets and available resources.
• To shoot and direct onscreen contributors on location, building through them complex observed sync driven narrative sequences in dynamic and changing circumstances.
• To build strong and positive working relationships where cultural differences may be present.
• To be involved in shaping the research of the series with researchers and APs, and setting up filming, working closely at all times to the editorial brief of the Series Producer or Executive Producer.
• Oversee health and safety on location, often in highly specialised areas of filming.
• To shoot sync and actuality with the edit in mind and to broadcast quality.
• To work with wildlife cinematographers to shape behaviour led natural history sequences, alongside the observational elements of the series.
• To do your own sound whilst self-shooting.

Knowledge, skills and experience

Essential

• Clear evidence of ambitious obs doc filmmaking and the skills, experience and talent to deliver this ambition.
• Excellent self-shooting skills. A successful track record of shooting and directing reactive observational sync with onscreen contributors for broadcast is essential – at least 2 self-shooting PD credits.
• Evidence of ability to produce upsync and develop narrative on the fly is essential.
• The ability in identify and produce multiple key story lines in real time situations.
• Evidence of strong directorial skills working with animal and human contributors
• Evidence of visual flair and strong and emotionally engaging, character-led storytelling.
• Willingness and availability to commit to at least 6 weeks on location at a time – late June to August and late Sept to Nov 2025.
• Experience of living and working out of remote bush camps, which could include sharing cabins/rooms/tents.
• Ability to work well in teams; managing and sharing information and knowledge with editorial and production management colleagues in their team.
• The ability to react appropriately to client strategy/direction and to deliver to the changing requirements.
• Able to manage complex and remote shoots and be responsible for safety on location. Understands ‘duty of care’ with regard to individuals’ wellbeing and production Health & Safety issues.
• Track record of confident and sound editorial judgements with respect to subject matter, contributors, content, presentation, legal and editorial policy, coupled with appropriate referral to EP's/SP's.

Desirable

• Knowledge of big cats and experience of working closely with them.
• An interest in and experience of using multiple camera technologies such as drone, GoPro, camera traps and thermal cameras.
• Off-road driving experience.
• Knowledge of editorial guidelines and awareness of BBC and statutory policies and regulations relevant to programme making, familiarity with the BBC employment practices and policies such as diversity, equal opportunities, and health and safety guidelines.

What will you gain from working at BBC Studios?

• We offer a competitive salary package
• Flexible 35-hour working week for work-life balance
• 26 days holiday (plus an additional day which is a Corporation Day) with the option to buy an extra 5 days
• Parental leave for new parents, regardless of gender, of up to a year with 18 weeks fully paid
• A defined contribution pension scheme with employer contributions up to 10%; and life assurance (at 4 times annual salary), eligibility for discounted dental, health care, gym and much more through salary sacrifice
• Excellent career progression – access to courses, webinars, workshops and the opportunity to work in different areas of the organisation

We welcome and encourage applications from candidates who are under-represented in the creative industries.

Please state in your application that you found this role through Creative Access.