Part one script

Script For Film One

Hi, I’m William Howe, Co-founder and Creative Director at Sidekick a proud, former student as Samuel Ward, and unlucky enough to have been chased by the most persistent man on the planet Neil Williams to be on camera and tell you a bit about who I am and what I do!

At Sidekick we’re a collective of agencies with specific skills, from Video Production, Design and Digital, Experiential and Events through to Retail Excellence and Product Sampling. Each agency retains it’s individual expertise but by bringing them together into one share space and team we’re able to pull upon the unique experiences of each agency to ensure we’re able to look at any brief through the right lens.

Being a Creative Director was never something I planned for in my career but is by far the most rewarding role I could imagine. It’s no joke when I say I’ve been working my whole life, I started out age four as a child actor, not quite Macaulay Culkin, but I was lucky enough to work with some amazing directors and travel the world doing it till I was 13 years old, when sadly the teenage years hit hard and I became the man you see in front of you now! But that passion for working and being around adults never stopped, I took any work I could from landscape gardening, working in a coffee shop to working in Schuh. This energy for the workplace really informed my decision to not go to university. I’d somehow managed a A* in Media Studies and Photography and a D in English but we won’t hold that against me. But, now it was time to take a risk, wangling an opportunity in London as a runner on a corporate shoot for a day’s work experience. My lack of tea making skills meant a very quick shift to supporting the camera team with their bags and making sure they got their Tea’s and Coffees made perfectly. On that one day, I threw myself into any challenge required and kept me ears open trying to pre-empt some task and stayed open to all crew members. I found even on the scariest of shoots making sure when you pass someone for the first time you acknowledge them, smile and perhaps “a wild idea I know” introducing yourself really set the tone of who I wanted to be; kind, open and friendly.

This simple trick, meant I got invited back then next day and for the rest of the week. I also got introduced to the Director of Photography and owner of the agency. The Director of Photography later that year taking me under his wing and kickstarting my career travelling the world filming. And the Agency owner giving me my first full-time job, where I learnt what it’s like to work with others in an office day-to-day.

After five years of editing, camera assisting, becoming a shooting PD and traveling across the world for work I had the pleasure of meeting my business partner on a shoot in Ibiza (sounds glamorous but sober maybe less so). We both were in a place of wanting to spend a bit more time in UK and came from different sides of the agency world. We started out with a vision of being fairer both to the crew but to clients too. Losing the fat from bloated shoot crews, tapping into my experience of travel crew set ups and putting client service and experience at the front.

As a two-person outfit, we set out with a handful of friends with possible work we’d have to prove our creativity on executing. Two BAFTA red carpets, 360VR World First lots of telecom’s videos, we expanded to our first employee and partnership with an experiential agency called Kreate. This is where the vision and drive for the business truly changed to build full service offering of agency’s that can work in collaboration and truly be one team.

Six and half years late here I find myself about to turn 29 looking at team of nearly 58 people across the business, that same simple principle of ears open in every scenario still stands. From client meetings to supporting colleagues and understanding the true rhythm that the agency is beating at is being open, being comfortable with uncertainty and certain that nothing is certain.

I live pretty happy knowing that if we continue to build our companies through fairness, empathy and talent. By focusing on humanity, the bottom line will follow.

 William Howe | Creative Director He | Him | His