People assume being a travel filmmaker means being permanently on the road. The truth is less romantic and more effective: the trips work because the base works.
For me, that base is London.
Why London
Three practical reasons. First, flights, Heathrow puts almost every destination I shoot within one direct flight. Second, clients, a large share of the brands and agencies I work with sit between London and continental Europe, and face-to-face still closes deals that email never will. Third, the timezone sits neatly between Dubai and Los Angeles, the two other poles of my work, and with Zahare Media running offices in London and LA, my day naturally stretches across both.
What a Base Week Looks Like
The weeks between trips have a fixed shape. Mornings are edit blocks, color, sound, delivery versions, the unglamorous 80% of this job that happens after the camera is packed. Afternoons are calls: campaign planning, treatments, negotiations. Evenings are the gym and an early night, because the next flight is never far away.
I batch everything. Shoot days on the road, edit days at base. Mixing the two halves ruins both, you edit badly in hotel rooms at midnight and you shoot badly while worrying about a deadline.
The Part Nobody Posts About
After 117 countries, I’ve learned that the constraint on this career isn’t stamina or airline status. It’s organization. Archives that are findable. Contracts that are filed. A calendar that protects edit weeks as fiercely as shoot weeks. The creators who burn out are usually the ones who never built a ground floor under the lifestyle.
London is my ground floor. The next few months, Italy, South Africa, China, the States, all get planned from a desk with a grey sky outside. That grey sky might be the most important location in my whole year.
