Co-Directors George Howard Rees-Jones and Artist Reece Straw
Underhill Creative is a partnership between Filmmakers George Rees-Jones and Reece Straw. Operating professionally since 2016, Underhill facilitates the production of commissioned film and creative content for commercial clients. We work across Fine Art, Design, Theatre, Music, Fashion, Professional Hairdressing and Indie Filmmaking but are always open to new industries needing digital content. Fundamentally we are cinema lovers, our visual research across the history of cinema and fine art heavily influences our work adding a rehearsed critical voice to everything we do. Our aim is to continually produce quality content for audiences around the world to learn, emote and enjoy.
What made you want to do the job you currently do?
R: Like anyone, I’ve always enjoyed film. The first memory of realising there was such a thing as a proper film was when my Dad made me watch Predator when I was about eight years old, thus began my love for 80’s action hero films. The second stand-out film was at my Dad’s 40th birthday party at home and his mate put Akira on to keep me quiet. I certainly wasn’t old enough to understand that classic but I think that was one of the many catalysts to pursue a creative career. In my early teens I used to make stop motion videos with blu-tack models on a Nokia phone, lovely 96p quality, then went onto playing with Flash animation. This was key in being able to get with editing software very easily when it came to university. I studied Fine Art as that’s the only thing I’d really been any good at in school; I lacked any guidance from my parents and was the second person in our extensive family to go to university, so a career wasn’t an idea spoken about. It’s been a bit of struggle combatting the ‘get a proper job’, ‘where’s art going to get you’ for many years but from social and financial sacrifice here I am as a professional.
G: Similar to Reece, I got into film from an early age. It all started with my love for Star Wars and being absolutely mind-blown by The Phantom Menace when I was about 5 years old. This ignited my interest in filmmaking, and throughout the rest of the Star Wars saga, myself and my brothers went on to recreate scenes with an old video camera we found in the loft. Going through secondary school and college, my love for film carried on, but was overtaken with my love for sports, most notably football. I was playing at academy level and was on course for a scholarship to America, but due to a harsh deep muscle injury, I had to take a step back from football. This was one of the hardest periods of my life, as I was unable to do something that I loved. Throughout the period of my injury, I wasn’t able to do much physically, but I could do a lot of thinking and also watching a lot of films and documentaries - I couldn’t say how many, but it was at least 2 a day for 2-3 months. This reignited my love for film and gave me the ambition to research into ‘how films are actually made’… Throughout my final year of college I really pushed myself into filmmaking and followed it through to university level. My ambition shone through and I was invited to projects in both China and Rwanda, which made me feel this is a career path I want to take and has helped drive my confidence to where I am today.
How did you get started?
R: I studied Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University and that was my first real experience with professional cameras. During the summer between my first and second year I made the decision to buy a decent camera and get good at video and photography with the hope of turning it into a career after graduating. That camera, paired with hours and hours of learning via YouTube etc, was how I made my first documentary ‘Val’s Gym’, that went onto to be shown at the ICA, London as part of Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2016. Most skills I have in video and photo are self-taught: looking it up and practising it in real life. Studying Fine Art taught me to think more critically and conceptually about my work and others’. Pair these together you get a strong foundation to be a creative that needs to learn a lot about business and finance!
G: I studied Media Production at The University of Lincoln. I wasn’t too sure on where I wanted to focus - editing, camera work, directing, so I aimed to learn as much as I could throughout my 3 years. This allowed my skill set to become extremely very varied, helping me towards my current success. I went on to help out on various projects through the university, such as BFI short films, international documentaries, and smaller local projects. This gave me valued industry experience, as well as strong connections within filmmaking.
What did your early years in the role involve?
R: After graduating it was a case of going back to retail jobs, finding bits of freelance work and putting all my money into investing in the gear I needed. A paid internship to help the artist-led studios and gallery Primary run the public programme came up and I managed to have a successful application. This internship gave me the freedom to choose where I wanted to develop so I got the chance to photograph exhibitions and artworks as well as forming relationships with the studio members who I still work with today. This internship was 20 hours a week, at the time I was living back home in Derbyshire, I stayed at my ASDA job doing 30 hours, 6am-2pm at ASDA, 3pm-6pm at Primary etc. days off at Primary also. Obviously, it came to a point where this wasn’t feasible mentally and physically, so I left ASDA and finally moved back to Nottingham and found another job at a menswear shop that doesn’t exist anymore. I continued my freelancing during this period until a job at menswear company Universal Works came up as Social Media Coordinator. I’d modelled for them at London Fashion Week prior (This opportunity came from my network at uni as they collaborated with an Artist from my course), so I applied and luckily got it! I spent a couple of years with them but decided to go fully freelance. It was at this point I had to call upon those relationships I’d been making all this time to try and get some work. Rough Trade gave me my first bits of work shooting gigs, Primary continued to use me for exhibitions and events and I started working with Aretê, a new barbers who introduced me to Angelo Vallillo and Dale Herne of DNA Artspace, who passed me onto Sebastian Professional, who passed me onto Wella, who passed me onto… you get the idea. It’s literally who you know unfortunately when starting out, so always be nice, on time and fundamentally, have talent. Fast forward three years I’ve teamed up with George and we have started Underhill Creative.
G: As soon as I graduated, I worked on a documentary project in Rwanda with a former tutor. This was an opportunity of a lifetime, and gave me first-hand experience into international documentary practice. From this, I have always kept looking for documentary projects I could take forward and keep progressing my skill set. I then went on to work part time as a freelance creative, finding my feet in the industry from working with independent brands, as well as keeping tabs on local productions. My other jobs entailed working part time for Broadway Cinema, and Universal Works. This allowed me to work more on what I wanted to work on within film as it meant finding money wasn’t too much of an issue. When my client base started to become strong enough, I became more and more confident I could work as a freelance creative full time. During this period, I became good friends with Reece, who had been freelancing for a few years. After working on a few projects together, we decided to team up and become Underhill Creative and I haven’t looked back since.
What’s an average week look like for you now?
R: It’s been all over the place in and out of lockdowns. December was insane, shooting everyday essentially with deadlines in early Jan, along with George buying a ‘fixer-upper’ so no Christmas for us. Every week varies, that’s the joy of it, but in more normal times we’d have some shoots, definitely some editing to do, emails to answer, meetings, planning projects for clients, planning pitches to get new clients, planning our own shorts, catching up on industry news and tech, talking about The Lord of the Rings and now finally thinking about our own branding and social media output. We travel a lot for our work so we have long car journeys, on the last trip to Edinburgh we had six hours to fill with conversation, but we never seem to struggle. We should probably start a podcast but we’re not those guys.
What's the best thing that's happened in your job?
R: For me it’s probably going to Los Angeles with Beam Editions to help with their stand LA Art Book Fair, visit local Artists and explore the LA art scene. I was on camera duties photographing and filming various things following the story of the late Ed Moses. I got to spend time with artworks at Ed’s home that no one has seen. Seeing work from such an important and respected Artist in this context was a big thing for me. It always is in the UK too when I work with Artists such as John Newling who I have a close relationship with. I help John out with photography and video things, most recently our collaboration on working with his book ‘Dear Nature’ to create a film for an exhibition at IKON Birmingham last year, it’s hopefully going to be shown at Brighton Festival this year too (in some capacity), so pretty big deals to me as a young Artist and filmmaker!
G: Along with working on international projects, and meeting such amazing and unique people, I’d say the best thing to happen in my job is to meet Reece. He has helped me take my career to the next level, through giving me a whole new insight into the industry. Since we teamed up last year, my whole ethos and capabilities have been upped - everything I have worked on recently, whether that's self-motivated or as Underhill, has been some of the best work I have produced. You can’t do everything on your own, as that mindset will always hold you back. Learning from someone with valuable experiences and good values is something everyone should consider, no matter what field you work in.
What’s the one thing you wish someone had told you as you embarked on your Creative Career?
R: Well, most have said ‘don’t’ which only made me do it more so I’m not sure if some encouragement would have helped me or not, creatives thrive in adversity. I do feel like I’m starting out again now as Underhill Creative, it’s a stronger position but there is a lot of work to do in getting our work out there and there is so much I don’t know about business. So, at this stage it would be nice to have some guidance on what’s actually necessary to run a production company business and not locked in business ideas from 30 years ago, Youtubers can be millionaires, Redditors can be stockbrokers the world has changed! I’m a firm believer in mentors, choose them wisely and have a collection from different industries to gather as much knowledge over time as possible, mine have helped massively and don’t know anything about photos or video. That is the reality of what we do its about 30% creating and the rest is running a business.
G: Luckily, I had a lot of support from my family with this career choice. Both my parents have built their careers from nothing and I have so much respect for them for that, but I feel they focused on industries they never wanted to be in in the first place. They have always pushed me to follow my dreams, but unfortunately have no idea what advice to give on how to get there - and I don’t think anyone does with this industry. When I’ve asked fellow creatives in the past on how they have developed their career, it's always the same answers: ‘networking’, ‘develop a strong client base’, ‘do work for free’. These are good(ish) points, but how does one achieve these things as well as making a successful and sustainable career path? There’s no right or wrong way of embarking on a creative career, but if someone was to tell me something different, like ‘take risks’, ‘believe in yourself’, or to just ‘do things you want to do’, BUT ‘always be yourself and respect whoever you work with’ as respect and good relationships go very far in creative networks. Unfortunately, you have to create your own path in this industry, so make sure you make it a good one. I don’t believe success is measured by ‘likes’ or how many people ‘view’ or ‘share’ your work, I believe it's making a career for yourself not for someone else, doing something you love that you’ve worked hard for, and if you’ve managed to create a sustainable output, then that’s success.
