Meet The Team | Dave Stephenson
Welcome to the latest instalment of our meet the team series, which, as the title implies will dive into the background of the amazing people that make up The Finish Line. Meet Dave Stephenson, who joined us this week!
Born in the South East and having spent his early years in East Yorkshire, Dave’s love of television began as a teenager in Mid Wales despite there only being three channels available in a language that he could actually understand! Though he managed to bend his A-Level coursework to a study of fledgling digital television broadcast technologies, the possibility of entering the industry seemed remote at this stage.
An interest in computers since a young age (as well as the dismantling and not always successful reassembly of his father’s work PC), allowed Dave to escape the wrath of his IT lecturer for installing a secret Quake network in the school’s newly built computer room and focus on programming instead. After several years of creating the back end database systems for several high profile websites, Dave found himself working for a large internet dating site in Birmingham. It was at this very point that he realised his career had been built up purely by accident! After much soul searching Dave decided that his ultimate desire was to get involved in television and ideally as a camera operator. Fortunately for him he knew a journalist who wanted to make a DVD version of his newspaper column and as a result Dave took it upon himself to join a BBC camera training course, bought a camera and set off round the world to make TV gold.
Having shot the footage, it then fell to Dave to actually edit and it soon became apparent that his editing skills were much greater than his camera skills! What that says about either is still up for debate but he used those early experiences to pick up some no-budget edits for a handful of features and shorts. Whilst finishing one of these aforementioned projects at a small production company, Dave found himself managing the post department and a merry band of editors, working across commercials and features, which ultimately earned him an RTS award for Best New Talent.
A move to London followed, with a new focus on Picture Finishing. It was here that Dave’s technical background, irritating attention to detail, as well as his creative eye came together and he quickly built a reputation for finding the best way to lift projects to the level that they deserve. Having worked on hundreds of hours of broadcast programming Dave was on the hunt for ways to expand his skillset, explore new technologies and different ways of approaching this craft, which is why he’s so excited about joining The Finish Line.
We asked Dave if he had any advice for his younger self to which he replied:
Stop worrying and keep going. There’s no definitive path, so you just need to do things your way. Oh, and it’s OK take a breath every so often – spending time outside work makes you more creative and everything you do helps you see the world from a new perspective.
If you would like to book Dave or anyone from our team get in-touch!
