barrypilling.co.uk

I’ve teamed up with some very talented people to start a new company called Telegraph Hill.

We’re working on Hollyoaks, The Fades and The London Pleasure Gardens. KAPOW! Not a bad start, huh?

Much more to come, will update again soon…

*taps glass with spoon*

Hi peeps, I have a little announcement to make… I’m leaving Being Human.



After three series and over 275 blog posts it’s time for me to step down as the Producer of Being Human online and let someone else take over running this fantastic community. I like to think we’ve always shown the fans the utmost respect and so I wanted to do a proper blog about it here before any changes happen to the Being Human site. Not that there will be any. Well, the quality might improve, posts might go out on time and there might not be as many errors in tweets but apart from THAT there won’t be many changes at all. 

I’ve been Producing the online content and managing the Being Human community since day one and it’s been such a fantastic job.  As many people have pointed out, it’s been a dream job and I’ve been very, very lucky to do it.  In that time we’ve won awards, become the most popular blog across the whole of BBC Vision (i.e. the telly bits of the BBC), we’ve become BBC Three’s most popular website ever, we’ve amassed over 380,000 Facebook fans, 17,000 Twitter followers, we’ve been trending week after week on Twitter, we’ve produced three DVDs and we’ve also launched the brand new spin-off show Becoming Human which has been seen millions of times and is now on its way to BBC Three.
 
*takes a breath*
 
After all that it’s hard to see what other challenges I could face in the Being Human world without corking it through utter exhaustion, so it’s time to pack my handkerchief on a stick and look for new adventures. 
 

I will always be a massive fan of Being Human and I can’t stress enough that these have been the best two-and-a-bit years of my life.  Being Human has been a constantly evolving project and there’s always been something new to make and broadcast, and once it’s out there a flood of hundreds and often thousands of responses come back our way.  It’s a complete buzz and as I’ve said many times before, the fan community is intelligent, funny and incredibly kind to us as the production team and to each other.  I do hope some of them will follow me in these post-Being Human days and stick with me as I make more films on YouTube and blog and tweet about the exciting new things I’m going to be doing next as I start freelancing and perhaps even setting up my own company. But more on that in due course.

My last day will be covering Becoming Human on BBC Three this Sunday and from then on I’ll be a regular fan, blogging and tweeting away like a good un.
 
I have many people to thank now I’ve come to the end of this brilliant chapter of my career.  Firstly Garret Keogh has been a fantastic mentor, boss and friend and we’ve made quite the formidable team.  Tim Breadin has taught me about the nuts and bolts of business and how to turn an idea on paper into a fully-fledged commission.  Phil Marriott, Geoff Evans, Rich Lyman, Jamie Morton and Anthony Collyer have been the Being Human blog shooters and editors and they are all very talented and have kept me sane on many a shoot.  Loving your work, chaps. Our production managers Cat O’Gorman and before her Vicki Duffin have both been funny, supportive, and of course mind-bogglingly organised. I admire them both greatly for possessing skills I can only dream of.
 

Toby Whithouse, Phil Trethowan, Rob Pursey, Laura Cotton, Poppy Stammers and Helen Munnicchi (plus formerly Matt Bouch) are the brilliant Touchpaper team who make Being Human. Together with the terrific writing team they start with a blank whiteboard and lots of coffee and somehow turn it into award-winning storytelling. They’ve taught me so much about how to make great drama from start to finish and I’ve taken it all on board and stored it under the ‘learn from awesome people’ section of my brain. I love to write and I’m hoping one day to show them a drama of my own.


Marc Ramsay is our Being Human commissioner and his guidance and long-term vision for the project has always pushed me to be a better, more professional, producer. Sarah ‘gets things done’ Clay is our Becoming Human commissioner and she’s the kind of driven, intelligent and passionate person who smashes through red tape to make the BBC truly great and truly loved. Yram and Annabel have helped me immensely with getting all the updates online and keeping me sane every Friday. I don’t know what they’re payed but it’s not enough. Sally Morales is wonderfully bonkers and did a great job redesigning the site, as did Andy Ashburner and the two very talented Steves. I’m still not sure which one’s which but they definitely rock.

Colin Teague, Derek, Marcus, Mike, Lloyd, Ryan, Cheryl, Laura, Mark Fleischman, Tom the Runner, Russell, Sinead, Lenora, Aidan… the Being Human and Becoming Human cast and crew are too many in number to name here, but they are a legendary travelling family.  Their kindness is surpassed only by their incredible talent for telling great stories. They’ve been very generous in letting us film them at work and in doing so have given the fans a fascinating insight into their world.

I’d also like to say a big thank you to my lady Chellington for supporting me through late nights, disrupted Christmas breaks and many long and lonely trips to Bristol and Wales. I’m sorry for spending so much time blogging and tweeting but you know it’s made me very happy. Safe to say, if life was a tin of buttons you’d be the shiniest.


Finally, I owe the fans a massive debt of gratitude for coming to the show, sticking with it and creating genuine friendships that form the bedrock of the fan community.  I hope you have been entertained by everything that’s been made so far and stay with the programme as it continues to evolve and excel.  If you’ve ever followed the blog I hope you’ve laughed, cried and (most importantly of all) done a little ‘dun-dun-durrrrr’ in your head every time I’ve written about an upcoming cliffhanger.
 
Thanks to you all.  It’s been a blast. 

Now onwards… to the future!


I produce the online content and manage the fan community for Being Human, a BBC Three TV show featuring a ghost, a vampire and a two werewolves all trying to live normal human lives. Give it a try if you’ve not seen it, it’s well good.

The first episode of the new series aired last Sunday and smashed it in the ratings, as well as creating a lot of noise online, some of which I’m going to document here.

WHERE WE LIVE

Being Human exists in several different online spaces. We have over 330,000 Facebook fans, 11,000 Twitter followers and a huge community centred around the Being Human blog. This is our hub of activity for the show, where hundreds of comments are posted daily.

THE FAN COMMUNITY

I love the Being Human fan community. They’re intelligent, funny and have some fantastic theories and discussions about where the show could go. Many of them have become friends in real life, chatting on Twitter, friending each other up on Facebook and travelling to Wales to meet up in person and see the set. They’ve embraced all the elements of the show we’ve introduced to them, including online storylines, new cast and crew members and some even follow my work away from the job, which shows curiosity and loyalty above and beyond your average fan of a TV show.

In fact, some of them may be reading this now because they’re a fan of Being Human. If that’s you, hello! You’re awesome.

THE TONE

Our community is a very positive one, and that’s something we’ve tried to build over three series. We aim to set a tone that’s funny, welcoming and warm. We want to people to feel like they’re part of a fun gang, not part of an exclusive clique, and the fans have created a self-regulating community that honours and enjoys this tone. The fans don’t tolerate aggression or arrogance, and will actively turn their back on people who try and steer the conversation that way. They also embrace new blog users, bringing them up to speed on topics they may not quite follow. And unlike many other shows (especially in the sci-fi genre) the Being Human bloggers don’t try to outdo each other with superior knowledge, rather they share that knowledge for others to enjoy. As a result many people get hooked not just on the show or the extras we create, but on the community itself.

Whenever it looks like the chat may turn sour, there arises a general consensus amongst the fans that it’s better to be a community that shares a love of the show, rather than a community that bitches and falls out. It’s like a family, really, and myself and Garret Keogh (our creative director) are very proud to have been a part of making it grow.

PERFORMANCE

The website has undergone big changes this year, and we’re getting bigger audiences as a result. Before the new series even aired we were getting higher unique user figures than the peak of the previous series (60k+). This is partly due to a redesigned website, a new online storyline featuring Annie (a ghost) trapped in purgatory and a new style of blog video that sees us getting up to even more mischief on set. Then, last Sunday 23rd January, it went into overdrive when the first episode of the new series went live. Here’s what happened on Twitter…

- We started with #beinghuman trending on Twitter in the UK.
- Then Lacey Turner started trending in the UK – this is her first acting gig since Eastenders.
- Then Robson Green started trending in the UK – this is his first acting gig since catching massive fish.
- Finally #beinghuman started trending worldwide.

I was ecstatic and celebrated in typical bolton style… by eating a pasty.

After the show we drove the conversation to the blog and launched episode highlights, plus a behind the scenes feature that went on to gather over 500 comments. I’m still waiting on exact user stats, but we’re expecting them to be high.

THE NEXT STEPS

This weekend we’ll be doing it all again, but this time launching brand new online drama Becoming Human off the back of the episode. This series features a crossover character from the main show, and lives entirely online. It’s a tale of deadly mystery, with episodes and evidence posted online for the audience to enjoy over the next eight weeks.

No pressure then…

In my day job I run Being Human online for the BBC.  Being Human is the highest-rated drama and highest performing website on BBC Three.  We have a brilliantly active fan community (all of them fantastic people) and it’s going rather well. 

However, this year we’re trying to push the envelope by doing something rather special on red button and online… a spin-off called Becoming Human.  It’s a murder mystery made of eight weekly episodes, plus new clues every day, such as pictures, cameraphone clips, maps, voicemails and other awesome evidence collected by the characters themselves. 

The episodes are written and created by the main Being Human team and it’s my job to write/produce the online elements that go out each day.  It really is going to be a new kind of drama experience.  The level of investment from the BBC, the way we’ve integrated the online team with the main unit, and the way the drama is distributed daily in lots of different ways should make it exciting and addictive for the fans.  Time will tell…

The main thing is I’ve seen the episodes and they’re really, really funny. 

Here’s the press release.

BECOMING HUMAN
Hit BBC Three drama Being Human inspires brand new online extension from show creators.

An exclusive online extension of hit BBC Three drama Being Human has been commissioned by BBC Drama Multiplatform in association with BBC Three.

Created by Toby Whithouse (Being Human) and written by Brian Dooley (Being Human, The Smoking Room), Jamie Mathieson (Being Human) and John Jackson (Being Human), Becoming Human is set in a fictional college and will follow a new group of characters over nine episodes.

Following events that unfold in the forthcoming third series of Being Human, vampire Adam (Craig Roberts; Young Dracula) is at college trying to get himself back on the straight and narrow. It’s here he meets the beautiful, cool Christa (Leila Mimmack; Married, Single, Other) – who just happens to be a werewolf. They strike up a friendship with Matt (Josh Brown; Grange Hill), and the three of them become embroiled in a mystery that leads to more than they bargained for…

Becoming Human will be produced by Touchpaper Wales, part of the Zodiak Media Group. They will work with the team behind the hugely successful Being Human website and blog – blog curator Barry Pilling and cross-platform director Garret Keogh – to create an innovative and interactive experience around the episodes.

Online audiences will be encouraged to interact with the story as it unfolds, with daily clues and materials posted on a new website linked to the Being Human blog.

Toby Whithouse, Becoming Human creator, says: “Yes, because *you* demanded it, the world of Being Human is expanding! We’ve got a cracking story lined up, with some terrific new characters and all the thrills and chills you can manage. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as we’ve enjoyed making it.”

Sarah Clay, BBC Multiplatform Drama Commissioner, says: “The fans of Being Human are incredibly active online, so we wanted to give them something they could really get their teeth into. The Becoming Human online extension doesn’t just consist of nine episodes, the narrative extends beyond that with daily clues in the form of press cuttings, anonymous tips, CCTV footage, mobile phone clips…giving the online audience the chance to follow the mystery on the blog as it unfolds.”

Rob Pursey is Executive Producer for Touchpaper Television, Eleanor Moran is Executive Producer for the BBC and Phil Trethowan (Being Human) is producing. The series will be shot on location in Wales.

The series was commissioned by Sarah Clay, BBC Multiplatform Drama Commissioner.

Becoming Human will launch online at www.bbc.co.uk/beinghuman, midway through transmission of series three of Being Human, which begins on BBC Three in January 2011.

www.bbc.co.uk/beinghuman is the highest performing BBC Three website, offering fans a regularly updated behind-the-scenes glimpse into the show.

Ladies and Gentlemen (and cats and dogs and the rest), here is the latest release available to buy in shops soon… The Being Human Series 2 DVD!

Being Human is a big part of my day job. It’s a BBC Three show about a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost that share a flat in Bristol. I run the online stuff for the show, editing the behind the scenes videos, writing articles and tweeting to the fans who are, without exception, brilliant. And bonkers. I love them.

This year we ran an online storyline, CenSSA: The Centre for the Study of Supernatural Activity, which I wrote and directed. We took a character from the show – Lloyd – and gave him his own YouTube channel and website where he tracked werewolves, vampires and ghosts. Gradually this research led him to Annie, George and Mitchell, the main characters in the show. Lloyd was kind of bumbling and (I hope) a bit funny and entertaining to watch. Fans could leave him messages on his YouTube profile and he would respond, so he built up a rapport with the audience.

However, when the series began, it turned out Lloyd was a major baddie… he even killed a werewolf in his first scene (Dun dun durrrr…). So from then on, anyone following his YouTube vids could witness his reactions to what he’d done, and speak to him directly, hopefully bringing the character to life. We wanted to expand him from just a man on screen into someone you could follow, argue with and tell off.

What’s exciting is that this year the blog team took over the production of the DVD extras, so we got to have a little fun with that too. There’s actually a locked area on there with some CenSSA goodies… but you’ve got to do something in particular to access it. Good luck finding it… Muhahaha!

Other blog team member Phil cut some brilliant in-depth behind-the-scenes features about the gorier aspects of the show, including behind the scenes of a guy haemorrhaging to death in a pressure chamber. Gross. There’s also behind the scenes of the moment Mitchell and Daisy, two vampires, rip a train carriage of people to pieces. We’re talking pints and pints of blood… so gory that even the lead actor, Aidan Turner, brought his camera on set.

There’s also some funny stuff on there. Mitchell fans will love the 1960s bonus feature, where Jason Watkins (Herrick) accusing Aidan Turner (Mitchell) of becoming less handsome. Something I’m sure most female fans will disagree with.

The main guy shooting our behind the scenes footage is our cameraman Geoff, or ‘Sexy Geoff’ as some of the fans call him. And quite rightly too, he’s a handsome man. He’s great at what he does, getting right into the heart of the action. However, for the first three weeks of production he wasn’t available, so I took over on shooting duty. One task was shooting on set of the cave scenes, where Mitchell has to knock another vampire’s fangs out with a brick. It was pitch black down there, with low walls carved out of solid rock… it’s one of the weirdest places I’ve ever been, and gets a feature of its own on the DVD. If you watch it, imagine me banging my head between takes. That’s basically what happened most of the day.

I’m really excited that the DVD is about to be released and can’t wait to hear what the fans think. Hopefully it should feel like an extension of the blog, as it’s us blog guys who have been in charge of putting it together. So if you buy one, I hope you enjoy it. We tried very hard to please you…