Eight Engines is a video production company, originally founded as a TV production company producing TV dramas for the BBC before expanding into the marketing world in 2017.
Before launching Eight Engines, founder and creative director Jack Leigh has worked on a number of well-known films and TV series including Fast and Furious, Skins, 71 and Northern Soul.
Here, he shares his career journey, tips and advice for those wanting to follow in his footsteps.
How did you first get into your industry?
Whilst Eight Engines is very much a brand, commercial and marketing video agency, I actually got my start in feature films. I was lucky enough to get an internship at Hurricane Films in Liverpool whilst I was at university. There I met a great network of motivated people and managed to start getting runner work on films and TV shows. I used to apply to be an extra on shoots then spend the whole day trying to tap up the crew for a job and eventually it worked!
The first full feature I worked on was called ’71 and I managed to get experience on a good run of films and TV shows like Fast and Furious 6, Peaky Blinders, Utopia, Get Santa, X+Y, and Last Tango in Halifax, as well as lots of commercials. In all honesty, I probably gave it a bit too much at the time; it’s very long hours and stressful work and I found myself quite severely burnt out. I made a conscious effort to try and find an in- house job with more regular hours.
Thankfully I got a job at a brilliant production company called Riverhorse. This gave me the chance to travel the world making films with a much smaller crew than I had in the past which meant I was much more involved in the creative. Combining this experience with the discipline and ethos I’d learnt on feature films was the starting point for what we do at Eight Engines now.
What do you love about your job?
Primarily, I’m lucky enough to work with the best group of people you could possibly ask for. We have some amazing clients and we get to make films for a living! What could be better? If I wasn’t making films with Eight Engines, I would be working in a office/bar somewhere and making films in my free time so it very rarely feels like a job if I’m honest.
We’re really lucky that we get to work with a huge range of different clients. We work with a number of branding, PR and marketing agencies, as well as directly with end clients.
Personally, I love getting a brief that lets us be really creative. For example, we recently did a job with Refresh (a brilliant Manchester-based PR and comms agency) for one of its clients that wanted to educate installers on changes in building regulations. On the surface, that seems like a dry brief, but knowing that the target audience are out and about on the road a lot and enjoy a laugh, we bounced around some ideas and decided to make a Taskmaster style game show using installer influencers to get the information across in an engaging manner. The end result was really well received and got a huge amount of engagement. Using the skillset we got from the film and TV world to make things engaging is something I absolutely love.
Who – or what – has inspired you in your career?
Mike Todd, the MD of Riverhorse/Near Life was a massive inspiration to me. I met Mike when I was very burnt out and disengaged with making films and I was questioning whether or not I wanted to continue to do it. When I started working for Mike that all changed. Mike was great at ignoring all of the tedium that went with working on a film set and focusing on the creativity. All he really cared about was telling a good story, there wasn’t really an ego associated with it and making films was suddenly exciting again.
What are the biggest challenges about your job?
For me, the biggest challenges come from actually running an agency. I always loved making films and like to think I know what I’m on about in that department but it’s a very different skill set to running a company. Getting my head around tax systems, learning how to find leads and all the other complexities involved in the running of a business took a while to get my head around. Thankfully I have some brilliant people supporting me with that kind of stuff so I can focus on the job!
What skills have been the most crucial to you succeeding in your career so far?
I think when it comes to any kind of creative work the most crucial skill is communication. Video is very much a team sport. It’s all well and good having the best idea in the world but if you can’t communicate that idea to other people it’s not going to turn out how you imagined it.
What was your first salary and what could someone getting into the industry expect to earn nowadays?
I worked freelance for a long time at the start of my career and was just taking whatever job I could, sometimes day rates would be £50 (or even better, I’d just be paid in ‘exposure’ – can you sense my sarcasm there?!). Even if you worked every day of the month, you couldn’t really survive on that. Thankfully there’s a standardised set of rates for freelance work now, on jobs above a certain budget, it doesn’t cover every job but it at least means there’s no huge productions taking advantage of people. APA publish the commercial rates and BECTU publish the Film and TV rates.
There are also more opportunities these days to work in-house for production agencies like Eight Engines, which provides more secure work for people wanting to get into the industry.
What education or training would be most useful for someone looking to follow your career path?
The great thing about film making is there are tonnes of ways you can get into it. Personally, I did a degree in Film and TV Production and got a lot of experience working as a runner but that’s far from the only way. Places like Screen Skills offer some brilliant training, and quite often it’s free. Just try and get on a set, you learn so much by just standing on a film set and watching what’s happening.
What advice would you have for someone looking to follow your path?
Don’t wait for someone else to give you permission to do something. If you want to be a filmmaker, go out and make films. There is never a perfect time to make something if you wait for funding or a client to hire you to make a commercial you might wait forever.
You might not make the next BAFTA winning film but everything you make teaches you something and helps guide you towards what you like and what you don’t like so when you do get hired to make a commercial or you get funding for a project, you’re ready to make something you can be really proud of!
