Stephen Chapman from 39 Pictures on building a career on passion
Stephen Chapman is co-director of 39 Pictures, a content studio at MediaCity. A former journalist and producer working for Granada and the BBC, his most memorable creative triumphs include the epic Versus Cancer concerts, and cutting through the Pandemic communications clutter with his ‘Hands. Face. Space.’ message.
Stephen and his wife Sarah established 39 Pictures in 2009, and has become known for delivering quality content for organisations, commercial brands and charities, with the speed and integrity of traditional broadcasting standards. What shines through Stephen’s career are the magic ingredients of creativity and passion.
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Stephen Chapman from 39 Pictures on building a career on passion)
Stephen Chapman is co-director of 39 Pictures, a content studio at MediaCity. A former journalist and producer working for Granada and the BBC, his most memorable creative triumphs include the epic Versus Cancer concerts, and cutting through the Pandemic communications clutter with his ‘Hands. Face. Space.’ message.
Stephen and his wife Sarah established 39 Pictures in 2009, and has become known for delivering quality content for organisations, commercial brands and charities, with the speed and integrity of traditional broadcasting standards. What shines through Stephen’s career are the magic ingredients of creativity and passion.
“My career really started towards the end of the ‘90’s and Manchester was the greatest place to be for music.”
I completely threw myself into it and I started one of the first online music fanzines. I was still a student studying French and German at Manchester University, and this meant I could get to see gigs for free and not pay for CDs! It really opened my eyes to the excitement of journalism.
“I remember preparing to take my exams in the last year of uni, when I got a call from a producer at BBC Radio Manchester the day Harold Shipman was found guilty to see if I’d help with the Breakfast Show the following morning. I took the decision there and then that this was where I wanted to be and covering this huge story was more important than getting to my final French exam. I passed my degree in the end, but I also knew that sport, music and news journalism was what I wanted to do.”
“Despite having a few newsroom placements and experience under my belt, I decided to go to Cardiff to do a post graduate diploma in journalism as I felt this would give me the foundations for best practice and to understand the legal aspects of journalism, which I can say now has helped me throughout my career. During the Easter holidays I came back to do a work placement at Granada TV and after that I was invited to freelance after my course had finished.
“I worked for Granada for three of the best years of my life alongside people who really pushed me in my career. I had some incredible assignments including covering the Commonwealth Games in Manchester and was part of a team producing regional packages for ITV for the 2006 World Cup in Germany.
“Although I did some presenting, my role of choice was producing, and it was here that I found my creative calling, I found I could do some interesting things.
One of those things was helping to establish Versus Cancer to raise money for The Christie Hospital in Manchester. Stephen worked alongside former base player of The Smiths, Andy Rourke and his manager Nova Rehman, and another Granada producer, Tom Smetham to create one of the UK’s largest charity concerts at the AO Arena.
“We were set to hold the gig at Matt and Phred’s, then when Andy kept signing up bigger and bigger bands, we realised that we needed a bigger space. It was a phenomenal feeling to be part of that project, working with inspiring people and seeing it grow from just the seed of an idea, it linked together my love of broadcast with my love of music.
That put Stephen in the frame for a new project working with Channel 4, which had ambitions to launch a radio station. He was tasked with producing and re-inventing one of the channel’s iconic entertainment shows, The Tube, in a radio format.
“Made as if live, we wanted to recreate the essence of the original programme, rather than copy it. Working with brilliantly talented presenters like Blur’s Alex James, Konnie Huq from Blue Peter, up-coming star, Emily Rose, and the late great Anthony Wilson, I think we managed to pull it off - plus we discovered some great bands and comedians before anyone else.
After Channel 4 Radio closed, Stephen and his wife Sarah, who also worked at Granada Television, decided to pool their talents to offer their skills to companies looking for creative content.
“We can either be hands-on or pull a very talented team together to produce fast-turnaround news and content for companies large and small, for their internal communications, or platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. Our first clients were Betfred and JD Sportsfashion PLC, which in the North West don’t get much bigger.
“One of the most important things for clients is that they can trust that we are going to be accurate, because we have the broadcast and legal background, something that fast turnaround social media content producers are sometimes lacking.
On the now famous public health message, ‘Hands. Face. Space.’ Stephen was working with the GP Taskforce in the East Midlands on a universal phrase they could use to reassure patients and communicate to the media; a simple instruction in the face of ever-changing government advice.
“Hands. Face. Space. took about 20 minutes to come up with at 6am one morning, entirely out of frustration with the government’s new ‘Stay Alert’ messaging, it was pretty odd to see it go everywhere. Space was the hardest word, because up until then everyone had been using ‘keep your distance’, so once space landed, it all fell into place.
“We reused it for a high street brand and a government advisor must have seen it, because a week later during a press conference the Prime Minister used the phrase about 40 times and then suddenly it was everywhere."
Stephen is keen to offer his skills and resources to charities that are close to his heart, and is an ambassador for the Whale and Dolphin Conservation charity and he is involved in the MediaCity Social Value and Sustainability Network.
He also mentors students from the University of Manchester and Cardiff University and has recently completed a project for the Salford Literacy Trail.
“39 Pictures is based in the White Tower, and this flexible location means when we are ready to grow, we can stay within the MediaCity family. We are looking forward to expanding into Europe but we are waiting to see what’s happening post-Covid.
“Our home is MediaCity, and it feels like fate, because all those years ago on my first ever work placement for BBC Radio Manchester, I was here as they broke ground for the Imperial War Museum North. I’m also a writer for Prolific North, and some years later, Peter Salmon invited me to look around the BBC buildings, while it was still a hard-hat area the only bit of colour was a square of carpet they’d chosen for BBC Children’s. It seems I have a connection to this place.
“It’s a fantastic example of sustainable development, because people don’t just think of it as the BBC anymore, MediaCity has grown into a campus and we’ve benefitted from being here, not just for the cool office space but for the people we’ve worked with along the way. It’s brilliant to be part of it.”
For more information, please visit: https://39pictures.com