From remote route planning to running first aid drills with Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman, Secret Compass TV Risk Manager, Liz Gray, reveals the essential (and surprisingly rewarding) role that safety plays in powering bold storytelling.
Read on for a behind-the-scenes look at how Liz and the team supported the crew of Long Way Home with bespoke training and risk consultancy.
“Everyone is 20 years older than they were on the first Long Way series, and many of this team perhaps aren’t the same kind of risk-takers they were the first time around. They have families, young kids and others to consider. But what I left with at the end of the day was that this was a team still hungry for adventure, but also now better equipped to deal with whatever was thrown in their way.”
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You do WHAT for a living?
When you tell people you work in risk management, eyeballs roll, something on the horizon suddenly seems to be really, really interesting, and excuses are made to slip quietly away. Tell them that you enable TV productions to film in some extreme environments; that you spend your days puzzle-solving and researching ways to enable activities in some wild locations, then the mood changes. Suddenly everyone wants your job.
In early 2024, Secret Compass was engaged to work with Bulwer Street Productions to provide risk management consultancy, safety documentation and training for Long Way Home. Having been assigned as the Project Manager, I had 15 countries to research and a wide variety of activities and creative ambitions to feed into the safety docs, but this kind of nerdy risk management is what I live for!
As part of the safety process, we were asked to provide some bespoke first aid and safety training to the crew and talent. It’s not difficult to sell the idea of learning first aid skills to anyone about to embark on a long, sometimes remote journey, but why safety and risk management? Why do crew or talent need to learn about it when they’ve got tons of experience and anyway, there’s a safety advisor accompanying them on the shoot?
off to scotland
Secret Compass already runs safety and risk management training for production companies which enable them to understand why safety is important and to equip them with the tools they need to write their own risk assessments and plan shoots. However, it’s rare that we are asked to run training for the actual location crew and talent just prior to departure. But what this told me straight away is that this was a team that was already invested in the importance of safety during the shoot. Of course, Ewan and Charley have been riding bikes around the world for decades; the production team are old-hands at this kind of shoot – what added extra could we give them?
So at 10am in a village hall near Ewan’s house in Scotland myself (and first aid trainers Trev and Matt) stood in front of the crew, Ewan and Charley and took a deep breath. I sensed that with only a few days until departure, everyone’s heads were mulling a myriad of tasks to get done, and that the focus wasn’t necessarily in the room! But this was a training day designed for their specific shoot, and most importantly designed to be highly participatory so that they could share their experience and knowledge. Ultimately, it was designed to make an adventurous road-trip even safer while not taking away any of the adventure!
engaging cast and crew
We covered why we (legally) have to, and why we (ethically and reputationally) want to make safety a priority and most importantly, covered risk assessment and incident management. There were going to be times during the shoot when Ewan and Charley went off just with the camera bike for a few days, so dynamic risk assessment was given a priority as we knew they’d want to make the most of the new filming opportunities and activities they would come across.
While I’d written a lot of safety paperwork, I knew that with the best will in the world, not every word was going to be read by everyone on the team! However, ignorance is not a defence in court, and the best way to involve anyone in risk assessment is to get them to write it themselves, so that’s what we did. Split into three groups with a variety of experience in each group I set them a challenge of writing their own risk assessment for this trip. It’s not every day that you get to discuss risk management with Ewan McGregor and to be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect when it came to interrogating his efforts. I have to say, the discussion with him and his team about their risk assessment was one of the best parts of the day. Ewan was very interested and engaged in the whole process (as fine an actor as he is, I am sure this was genuine!), grasping immediately the importance of it but also what hazards were most likely or had the biggest consequences. The Directors were similarly mindful of the risks, and particularly aware of their liability for the safety of the team.
Throughout the day, Trev and Matt took the team outside to run some first aid training, tailored to cover typical injuries they might encounter during this kind of trip. This culminated in a more complex scenario involving several vehicles, a hysterical driver and an injured biker out on the village green. No-one going past seemed to consider this an unusual site in the village so we remained undisturbed as the team were tasked with handling the situation.
hungry for adventure
Some of the day was filmed and recorded, including my having to do a piece to camera about the importance of safety training and travel risk. The first episode on May 9th might reveal whether I carried this off or not, but if any of the day does make the final edit, I hope it conveys the importance of the theory but more importantly, the benefit of doing such training in person. Being able to eyeball someone when you’re discussing the risks they’re prepared to take on a shoot is invaluable. It’s hard to build a relationship via a screen and being able to challenge and interrogate processes and reasoning is far easier in person.
Everyone is 20 years older than they were on the first Long Way series, and many of this team perhaps aren’t the same kind of risk-takers they were the first time around. They have families, young kids and others to consider. But what I left with at the end of the day was that this was a team still hungry for adventure, but also now better equipped to deal with whatever was thrown in their way. The team were so generous with their time and experience, and as I sat in the airport nursing a G&T en route home that evening, I thought mostly about how lucky we are to be able to share our expertise with teams like this, and to enable people to embark on such great adventures!
Liz started working for Secret Compass as a freelance expedition leader, and over the years found herself doing more and more TV safety work in amazing places on Secret Compass projects. Liz is now one of our TV Risk Managers.
For more tales of adventure, follow @secret.compass and @longwaytvofficial on Instagram.