Adventure pays off for Fylde creative consultancy

A Fylde creative consultancy and film production team has put itself in the frame for an award after a year of growth.
AWOL of Kirkham's live streaming coverage on the Manchester MarathonAWOL of Kirkham's live streaming coverage on the Manchester Marathon
AWOL of Kirkham's live streaming coverage on the Manchester Marathon

AWOL Adventure and Media Productions based at the Progress Business Park in Kirkham is nominated in the digital innovation category of this year’s Federation of Small Businesses regional wards.

The company was founded by two friends with an interest in outdoor adventure and a dream to start their own film production company.

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Richard Burnett and Greg Goodall gave up their respective jobs in 2012 to form AWOL which has evolved to pursue two main streams of business – media production and strategic communications.

AWOL filming for an American Express communications videoAWOL filming for an American Express communications video
AWOL filming for an American Express communications video

When they started they targeted filming of outdoor and extreme sports events.

Greg said: “We always wanted to create a film production company and so we gave up our jobs, which was a pretty reckless thing to do.

“I lived in Lincolnshire at the time and had been a Lidl area manager, while Rich was working at BAE Systems at Samlesbury. We started with video and social networking for the outdoors.

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"We went to a Total Warrior event at Shap attended by thousands. We took photographs and gave them away free. Our website crashed due to demand – more than 2,000 people visited it and so thought we must be on to something.

“We set ourselves some goals. One was, one year from now we want to be flying around the world filming and want to work with Bear Grylls!

“One year later we were coming off a shoot with the Bear Grylls’ Survival Academy team in Dartmoor and heading off to South Africa to do some filming for American Express, But we thought we had still not made it. We were chasing everything and not making loads of money. Now we do less of the travel stuff and focus more on creating affordable high end content.”

The company specialises in film promotions and has a client list which includes the likes of Brietling, American Golf and Pilkington and has tripled its turnover in the past year.

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But they also produce live coverage and satellite live streaming of sport events such as the Manchester Marathon focusing on the runners, their individual stories.

They also worked on the Time Flies West End production producing video to be shown during performance

Greg added: “We have an amazing, incredibly dynamic team of nine, all passionate about what they do, videographers, editors, marketing director, storyboard artists even our own music composer.