Fernando lives with me and works as a Producer Director. He researches, writes and shoots videos for factual TV and documentary.
Earlier an advertising creative, I wasn’t around at the turn of the century when he decided to get involved with more meaningful creative work. Taking a break from advertising he went around the world on a motorcycle producing video features and writing travel and cultural articles for magazines. He also published an early video podcast. His passion for making documentaries and factual TV stems form that journey.
Documentaries on the road and on a motorcycle.
Riding connected him with landscapes and their people. Coming from a touristic country, he doesn’t enjoy tourism so much and rather than pictures and souvenirs he treasures encounters with people. Taking time to live like they do, to eat what they eat and if possible to work like they do opens up true dialogue and understanding. Making documentary films was way of sharing and collecting these experiences .
He signed up at University to retrain as a journalist and documentary maker. As soon as he finished his BA he took off on a bike taller than him with a Canon XM1 camera, a Pentium III laptop and a toothbrush riding westwards and recording the stories of peoples and places he encountered. He published videos, photos and travel reportage through a podcast called Never Let a Dago By on nomadpodcast.com. Since, he rather focuses on the positive side of stories because he thinks there are already enough bad news around.
Switching from print to pixel.
Fernando provided Mags with photos, videos and reportage style features. Magazines then were having a hard time as we all switched to digital publications. Paper could hardly compete with the internet nor photographers or writers could as the avalanche of newly created cultural instances sloshed around. It was hard to monetise a podcast or getting paid for articles. Fernando eventually returned to England and went back to write and produced adverts. Nevertheless, he did so having gone though a life changing experience, personal and professional.
Swings and roundabouts, back to adverts, to academia and to documentaries again.
Rather than deter him, the experience made him more determined to producing and shooting factual TV and obs-docs. Because of his experience, Fernando worked for two multinational advertising agencies in the Russian Federation. At his return from working in several of the ex Soviet republics Fernando decided to further his training in factual and signed for a Masters in Digital Documentary at the University of Sussex. This was in 2013. He enjoyed learning, teaching and decided to carry on researching and training. He was awarded a Doctorate for his research in creativity and completing his training as university teacher a fellowship of the Higher Education Academy.
Fernando’s academic research focuses on creativity and creative analysis in what scholars call the documentary mode. This is, mediated representations of events in the historical real. What we refer today as Factual.
Doing what he loves and doing it well.
Since, he has Directed produced for broadcast TV and film several documentaries, some of which are screened, published in academic journals or featuring on documentary film festivals.