Simon Maxwell

Simon Maxwell is the producer of Fresh, which has now been commissioned for television as Off The Hook.

How did you get started as a producer?

Things have a habit of looking simpler in hindsight.  Looking back, the road to becoming a producer seems kind of linear, but in reality, getting here has been the usual combination of luck, perseverance, and muddling through from one job to the next.  If you keep going long enough, opportunities will always present themselves.  In my case, I joined forces with Nick Hamm, already a very well established filmmaker.  We realised we make a great team and just went for it, set up a company and a slate of projects, and launched ourselves. Off the Hook is Greenroom Entertainment's first TV show and we have a strong slate of forthcoming projects for both TV and film.   

What made you want to be a producer?

I always wanted to work in TV and film.  At school and uni, my focus was on writing and directing, but then gradually through experience, trial, and error, I realised that producing was the most fulfilling role for me because it allowed me to balance creativity and business and to develop a project all the way from initial idea through to finished show - and work with a lot of amazing creative and technical people in the process.

What advice would you give to anyone wanting to produce for a living?

Keep focussed and keep doing it.  It's easy to get blown off-course in this industry.  You have to be bloody-minded and persistent, zip up your rhino suit and get on with it.  It is also a good idea to team up with people who have complementary skills to your own, so that you become more than the sum of your parts.

How did you get involved in Fresh?

I came up with the idea for Fresh to fit a brief from BBC Switch for a comedy series for teens.  It was one of those rare events where it took less than a week to go from first meeting with broadcaster (Head of BBC Switch Geoff Goodwin) to concept to treatment to commission.  Geoff liked it and went for it.  From there, we were lucky enough to team up with a great writer in Dean Craig - who instantly clicked with the material and became a essential part of the team - and then it was a fairly swift period of development and into production.  If only all projects ran so smoothly! 

What's the difference between the online and TV versions of Fresh?

The main difference between Fresh (the online show) and Off the Hook (the TV show) is format/length.  BBC Switch originally commissioned five five-minute webisodes.  This short-form format in turn informed plot and structure - we needed to create self-contained stories in five-minute instalments, whilst also keeping the broader story arc running, which is trickier than it sounds. 

When we came to the TV show we had the luxury of a full half-hour format, which gave us much more freedom to roam - to develop story and character - and explore comic scenarios more fully.  When the TV show was commissioned, the original webisodes were reformatted to create episode one - which is a really interesting way of piloting a show online.  I think we will be seeing more and more of this kind of online gestation of TV shows.  

Why did the name change to Off The Hook?

The feeling at the BBC was that the original title Fresh referred too directly to the world of freshers and academia and we needed a title that would widen the reach of the show (because it's about the characters more than the setting) which is an ambition we all share.  Off the Hook has a lot of different meanings that are relevant to the show - it means "fresh", but also has connotations of escaping, being set free, getting away with something, or trying to catch members of the opposite sex... but without success, obviously.

How did the development process work?

Dean Craig wrote the scripts.  Dean and I have known each other for years and work very well together creatively.  When it came to the TV series, we worked collaboratively together on the storylines, then Dean wrote first drafts of the scripts, and sent them to me for notes.  With comedy, the first thing is to get to story down and then continually go over the script in successive passes to progressively layer in more comedy - bashing ideas back and forth, writing, rewriting, editing - and then continuing this process until you have honed scripts.  Once the team is happy, the scripts go in to the Commissioning Editors at the BBC and we get a set of notes, which we respond to and finally end up with the production drafts.  Just like that.

What other projects are you working on?

We obviously can't go into too much detail about our slate, but we are gearing up for production on our first feature film, a rock n' roll comedy to be directed by Nick Hamm.  Our forthcoming TV projects include two big drama serials - a crime drama and a historical epic - and we also have several new comedy projects in the pipeline that we plan to shoot in 2010.  So a pretty good mix across the board.