Every chapter.
Every couple.

In 2014, I bought a very expensive camera to document myself learning to fly. There was just one problem: it was too big for the little aircraft I was flying.

At the time, I was creating flying tutorials and documenting my own progress on YouTube under the name London Village Studios. My then girlfriend, now wife, Danni, gave me a choice: find something to do with that camera, or sell it.

That something was Gemma and Dan’s wedding.

Wedding filmmaking hadn’t been the plan. But being welcomed into a group of people’s lives, surrounded by their joy, emotion and fun, gave me a reason to keep coming back.

I filmed four weddings that first year. Without quite knowing it, I’d found my happy place.

The business grew slowly. In 2015 and 2016, I was filming around ten to fifteen weddings a year alongside a full-time job, always looking for the next opportunity to pick up the camera and step into another wedding day.

There’s something about a wedding that still gets me. You step out of the world around you and into this little bubble, full of people, relationships and moments that will never come together in quite the same way again. Every couple’s bubble is different. To me, it feels like stepping into a storybook.

In 2018, after four years of filming weddings, I welcomed a business partner from a corporate filmmaking background. I introduced him to filming weddings, and London Village Studios became The Filming Company.

I was giving the business everything I had while still working a part-time job, knowing where I really wanted to be. By 2019, we filmed 48 weddings in a single year.

On 18 February 2020, I finally left my job to give the business my full attention. We had 70 weddings booked. It felt like the moment everything had been building towards.

Just over a month later, the country went into lockdown. Those 70 weddings became eight. Almost as soon as I’d committed to doing this full-time, the business was fighting to survive.

On 23 March, I offered free ceremony livestreaming for weddings that could go ahead during the disruption. I wanted loved ones who couldn’t be there to have a way to watch. For some couples, being able to include those people could make the difference between going ahead and postponing again, affecting every supplier involved.

Meanwhile, a connection brought an unexpected lifeline: a contract with an EFL League Two football club to create a 45-minute pre-match show before every game that season. That work included the Talk of the Town series and took me to football grounds across the country, from Barrow-in-Furness to Wales and Cornwall.

I didn’t even like football. But I knew what that work meant.

Without it, this business would not be here today.

The strain of 2020 had changed the business, and in 2021 I made the difficult decision to leave the partnership and continue on my own.

I learned that two heads aren’t always better than one—especially when you care so deeply about giving every couple the experience you know they deserve.

On 28 March 2021, BLOC Pictures was incorporated. A new name gave me the opportunity to rebuild, with full responsibility for the care, attention and experience each couple received.

I carried my existing couples’ bookings across and delivered their films myself. Through a difficult transition, those commitments remained mine to keep.

By 2022, I was focusing entirely on weddings and leaving corporate work behind. I had the freedom to shape the business around the experience I wanted my couples to have, and one idea became a very real room.

I turned an office into a theatre.

I wanted couples to come in, take their seats and see their own people and memories on the big screen. Their wedding film deserved a premiere. After everything that had gone into their day, watching it again should feel like an occasion in its own right.

Working on my own, I was steadily filming 60 to 70 weddings a year. The journeys took me across the UK and overseas, to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Sicily, Tuscany, Bordeaux and Gibraltar. If a couple wanted me there, I found a way to be there.

Through it all, the friendships became as much a part of the work as the films. I’ve sat on the steps of stately homes with upset bridesmaids, comforted elderly relatives and driven guests home when their transport fell through. Sometimes the person in front of you needs you to put the camera down for a moment.

Being welcomed into someone’s wedding means a great deal to me. I care about the people who have invited me in.

In October 2024, Danni and I moved from West Sussex to County Durham. We were beginning a new chapter together, but the business I’d spent ten years building was coming with us.

As we packed our home, I was packing the business too, working out how to establish myself in the North East while honouring every commitment I’d made to couples down south.

In 2025 alone, I made 47 return train journeys. There were drives as well, with weddings taking me back and forth across the country as the first northern bookings began to come in.

Behind every journey was a couple who had chosen me. Moving home didn’t change the promise I’d made to be there.