Skins Production Information

15 April 2011

Skins is made by Company Pictures for E4 and Channel 4.

 "Skins continues to go from strength to strength, with viewing figures of the last series being the highest yet.  I am thrilled we are able to bring an entirely new generation of Skins to the screen, as the show continues to redefine itself.  And with this new cast, we have an extremely talented and exciting group of characters whose stories need to be told." - Camilla Campbell, Channel 4 Head of Drama

 Company Pictures was established in 1998. Other television production highlights include: Elizabeth I (winner of 3 Golden Globes); all eight series of Shameless (Channel 4: BAFTA and RTS Awards); six series of Wild at Heart (ITV); George Gently (BBC1); The Devil's Whore (Channel 4); Generation Kill (HBO); Mansfield Park; The Palace (ITV1) and The Take (Sky1).

 In the past Company Pictures has produced: The Lakes by Jimmy McGovern; A Young Person's Guide to Being a Rockstar (Channel 4 and Warner Bros: RTS award Best Serial); North Square (Channel 4: winner Best Series Press Guild);  Not Only But Always... (Channel 4: BAFTA winner: Rhys Ifans Best Actor); The Rotters' Club (BBC); and Life and Death of Peter Sellers (HBO: winner of two Golden Globe Awards for Best TV Movie and Best Actor for Geoffrey Rush and 15 Emmies).

 Company has made five feature films with some of the UK's leading directing talent including films by Roger Michell, Stephen Hopkins, Penny Woolcock, Shane Meadows and Lynne Ramsey.

 Amongst its numerous awards Company Pictures won Best Independent Production Company at the 2005 and 2008 Broadcast Awards and the European Producers of the Year Award at the 2004 Monte Carlo Awards.

 Since October 2004 Company Pictures has been a part of the All3 Media group.

 

 

John Griffin

Executive producer

Before becoming a successful writer and producer, John Griffin was an actor for nearly 20 years. He worked across the arts in Theatre, TV and Radio and even received a Best Actor Award from the Manchester Evening News, in 1997.

In 2001 he became a script editor working with Paul Abbott on ‘Alibi', a 2 x 90 min drama for ITV before joining Company Pictures as one of the original creative team on ‘Shameless'. On series two of ‘Shameless', John wrote an episode as well as continuing to script edit. He then went on to produce the third series becoming series producer on series four and five.

After producing series 4 of Skins, John is now Executive Producer for Series at Company.

 

Bryan Elsley

Co-creator/Executive producer

Bryan, born in 1961, spent most of his childhood in the Edinburgh satellite town of Dalkeith before going on to study English and History at York University. It was there he met a young student named Harry Enfield. The two of them shared a passion for taking the mickey and decided to form a comedy duo - which became known as Dusty and Dick. ‘Dusty and Dick's Lucky Escape From The Germans' proved a sell-out hit at the Edinburgh festival.  After parting from Enfield, Elsley took up a career in theatrical direction before going on to write, first for the theatre then for television. His seminal short film ‘Govan Ghost Story' paved the way for other writing jobs on British serials.

In 1996 he wrote the award-winning adaptation of Iain Banks' ‘The Crow Road' and two years later ‘The Young Person's Guide to Becoming a Rock Star'.  Since, Elsley has written several original series and films, including ‘40' with Eddie Izzard (2003), ‘Nature Boy' (2000) and ‘Rose and Maloney' with Sarah Lancashire (2002-2005).

Bryan is currently writing and producing the US version of Skins due to transmit on MTV in January 2011.

 

Matt Strevens

Producer

Matt Strevens started his career at the National Theatre where various jobs culminated in him becoming Manager of the NT Studio, the National's research and development lab for new work.  As well as working with established writers such as Tom Stoppard and Caryl Churchill he was fortunate enough to enable the work of emerging writers of the time such as Abi Morgan, David Eldridge and Chris Chibnall.  He also ran the Young Directors Programme whose participants included Thea Sharrock, Rufus Norris and Dominic Leclerc who Matt has just worked with on Skins.

After the theatre Matt got his first TV break on EastEnders as a script editor before moving onto Born and Bred for the BBC and then joined The Bill as script editor moving to story editor.  He was there given the opportunity to produce 28 hour long episodes including the first episode in HD. After this he produced series 2 of RAW in Dublin for Ecosse Films and saw its move from RTE2 to a prime time Sunday night slot on RTE1.  The re-imagined series proved a success and was re-commissioned for a third run. 

 

Amanda Boyle

Director (Episodes 1 & 4)
Having devised a collection of award winning touring theatre shows at University, Amanda joined Working Title Films where she helped set up the low budget film label WT² and worked on the Oscar nominated Billy Elliot. At the same time Amanda began to direct her own film work. Her first short led Screen International to hail her as one of ‘the UK's most exciting new directors' and ID Magazine as one of 250 people around the world that might ‘influence contemporary culture'.

Since then, Amanda has won an array of international awards for her films. Her credits have included the multi-award nominated Hotel Infinity, Channel 4's prestigious Coming Up series and Pop Art which was based on the short story by American writer Joe Hill.

In 2008 Amanda was the recipient of the Clore Leadership Programme's Film Fellowship, which has led to a new collaboration with the National Theatre. Last year she directed the ground breaking, Rose D'Or and RTS nominated Channel 4 drama series Cast Offs which was praised in the House of Lords as "brilliant, funny, touching and completely unsentimental". Amanda also directs commercials for Jonathan Glazer's Academy Films.

 

Phillippa Langdale

Director (Episodes 2 & 3)

Notable for directing some of British Televisions most prolific drama's, Phillippa burst onto the scene in 1997 directing the hugely successful ‘Grange Hill'. From there she went on to direct episodes on ‘EastEnders', ‘The Bill' and ‘Casualty'. Not only successful in continuing drama, Phillippa has also spent time on comedy drama ‘Pulling Moves' for BBC Northern Ireland.

Phillippa also directed two successful films; ‘The Vice' in 1999 and ‘Lloyd & Hill' in 2001, both for Carlton.

She has previously worked with Company Pictures in 2000 on ‘North Square' for Channel   4 and ‘Waking the Dead' for the BBC from 2004 to 2008.

This is Phillippa's second year on Skins after directing the episodes ‘Cook' and ‘Emily' for series four.

 

Jack Clough

Director (Episodes 5 & 6)

Jack started out as a production runner in 2006 on commercials and music videos. Using the money earned, he bought his first professional camera and editing software and began to make small films and animations.

For the ‘Skins Secret Party', Jack asked if he could film a ‘Behind the Scenes' style short film. As a result of its success, Jack was commissioned to direct, film and edit all the DVD Behind the Scenes Extras for Series two. Jack also filmed all of the mini-dramas (platforms) and titles for Series two.

 

Jack went on to direct the series three platforms, make the series three behind the scenes, and shoot the titles for series three and four. He also studied PPE at York University but dropped out after two years and worked full time on Series four as Director and editor of Skins Cross-Platform, which involved directing seven mini-dramas, two animations and various video features.

During this period he has made a number of music videos, a video installation for Shunt Lounge, worked on a number of short films and shot material for an Animate TV which was shown on Channel 4.

 

Dominic Leclerc

Director (Episode 7 & 8)

He has won the Channel 4 Regional Theatre Director Scheme which placed him as Resident Director of Sheffield Crucible, under Michael Grandage. He has won the David Fraser Bursary (ITV), the Oxford Samuel Beckett Award for his production Almost Blue (Riverside Studios), and been selected to take part in the National Theatre Directors Programme. He has recently been shortlisted by Channel 4 on their ‘4Talent' scheme as Best Director.

Dominic has directed some TV best known programmes such as ‘Shameless', ‘Holby City', ‘Casualty', ‘Heartbeat', ‘Coronation Street' and ‘Emmerdale'. As well as a career in television Dominic has directed performances in some of Britain's most famous theatres.

He also directed the short film, ‘Protect Me From What I Want' in 2009 staring Naveed Choudhry and Elliott Tittensor.