A visual guide to safety

What began as a necessity became a blessing for film and television safety adviser Jamie Fewster. RT Group’s new Global Head of Production Safety Services was making video notes on location to share with colleagues.

“I started talking to the camera more, and eventually it clicked that it would be good to send videos to clients or incorporate them into risk assessments,” he explains.

“Being a visual medium, it is more effective, and much more engaging, than long, laborious documents that people can skip through and miss important details.”

Fewster’s videos are now a regular feature of his work, providing safety information and advice for production crews and highlighting hazards in a way that paperwork can’t.

“If you’re there on scene, you can film it and show exactly what that issue is. We started including them in briefings and people liked them so we do them all the time now. It means people can be more actively engaged rather than being a passive recipient, and it’s much more intuitive than traditional paperwork.”

The videos even feature subtitles so that local crews can see and benefit from them in the same way as the rest of the English-speaking production team.

This foresight and understanding of how to engage an audience is one of the many skills that Fewster has brought to RT Group, along with years of experience and a background in scripted television and fi lm.

Building on his arrival are further high-profile new hires, including Arlette Gard, who has worked on dramas such as The Crown, Who Is Erin Carter? and Landscapers, and Lexi Ingall, whose credits include Saltburn and HBO series The Third Day. Both have joined the team as Deputy Heads of Production Safety Services, spearheading the company’s expansion in multi-genre safety.

Their arrival is part of a significant evolution within RT Group, formerly known as Remote Trauma, which has established a reputation for location safety support for unscripted, high-risk and reality television, and will help build on their existing credits within the scripted world.

“Nobody enjoys going through the safety paperwork, so anything we can do to improve that process and make it more engaging is a positive step forward,” says RT Group founder and Managing Director Alex Bohanna. “That’s where techniques such as Jamie’s site videos can make a real diff erence.”

As part of the company’s digital transformation, it has completed a rebuild of its online risk assessment tool, ORA, and integrated a customer relationship management (CRM) system into its daily operations.

“ORA was designed to make the life of production easier, to do more with the resources they have, increase speed and ensure compliance. It was a tool built to be the production manager’s friend, allowing them to save time while ensuring they are legally compliant,” explains Bohanna.

The bespoke online risk assessment system has been rebuilt from the ground up – capitalising on more than 12 years’ experience managing and supporting clients on previous versions – making it more intuitive and enhancing every step of the workflow. Production companies can create more comprehensive risk assessments faster – each one tailored to the specific locations, activities and hazards of every shoot.

The system allows for internal review and sign-off by senior staff members as well as comprehensive feedback and support from the RT Group safety team – all directly within the system – and provides complete and detailed oversight of progress through the risk-assessing journey. These, and many other features, help guide and support the risk assessor every step of the way through the minefield that is health and safety.