Copyright hellomagazine
Phil: "With each team, there is the Lewis, the producer director, who also has with them an assistant producer, who does sound, and the entire time, I think I must get about 2,000 WhatsApps every day explaining what they're doing, where they are, what decisions they're making. So that we in the production team, the checkpoint and in London, can follow the story of what's going on, to make sure that – just like any production and just like any story – any thread that is started is finished. "Stories have beginnings, middles and ends. And these guys, usually these guys are fantastic, but they're also sleeping in bus stations and probably having two meals a day, if that (maybe crisps and custard creams). So we're keeping an eye on the story arc and that involves us getting a lot of WhatsApps from the team on the ground with them. "They also have a support vehicle with a driver. We've got what we call an MSA, a multi-skilled agent, who does security and he's also a medic, should anything happen. "So every time anyone gets on a bus, stays in a hotel, crosses the road, there's someone out there looking after their safety. They're walking through dodgy parts, they're keeping an eye, looking around them. "And then on top of that, we've got a researcher and a fixer. The fixer is someone who speaks the local language. I'll be running on getting release forms of everyone, getting location releases, and our researcher is also picking up GPS, so communicating with the PD, saying they'll be in the support vehicle. They'll travel ahead of the bus so then someone is there to pick them up. On the other end, Lewis is on that bus. So it's a huge amount of logistics within the team, and then we've got five [pairs] going on at the same time, making sure that all that happens."
