MBW FIELD NOTES
Stories gathered off the clock
Original films, travel journals and small observations about life, work, people and the moments that change things.
MBW Field Notes is where my uncommissioned work lives: stories drawn from real places, real conversations, real people and real moments.
These are the projects made without a brief — made to follow curiosity, capture something worthwhile, and offer something useful to others.
The work sits slightly outside my client work, but it very much shapes it. As Kenneth Burke once put it, stories are “equipment for living”: tools that help us notice more, understand more, and find our way through.
Latest stories by series
WRITING SERIES
Stories from the Road
A chronological collection of journal entries created whilst travelling.
WRITING SERIES
“POSTCARDS”
A collection of stories that seem unconnected at first, drawn from experiences of living and working.
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Put the Oxygen Mask On Yourself First
Read more: Put the Oxygen Mask On Yourself First
FILM SERIES
Everyday Cinema
Films and conversations with other people, featuring their stories, insights and experiences.
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Something To Remember Me By
Read more: Something To Remember Me By
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About
I grew up in Norfolk, England, and have been drawn to stories for as long as I can remember.
As an only child with access to my parents’ Sky Movies subscription, I spent a lot of time watching films. Some of them stayed with me. They gave me a new way of seeing things.
Later, I studied architecture, which taught me to think about how people, art, technology and environment shape one another — ideas that still inform my work today. But I kept coming back to stories. I wanted to understand why some feel alive while others feel empty. Why some hook us and give something to the person watching, reading or listening, while others fall flat.
MBW Field Notes is where I test those ideas in the open: a place for my personal filmmaking and writing to take shape.
The Studio
If you recognise something in the work here, my studio exists to bring that same attention to your brand, project or organisation.
MADE BY WOODSMOKE is a digital media production studio for businesses with real substance behind them. I’ve worked with national brands, local businesses, charities, manufacturers, life coaches, property developers, architects and business consultancies.
The work starts with understanding what is already there: the people, place, offer, detail and reason someone should care. From there, we shape the story and create the materials around it — whether that becomes a website, a film, a set of photographs, a piece of writing, or a more complete body of work.
The aim is not to make marketing that shouts louder. It is to create work that feels considered, useful and worth spending time with — work with enough substance behind it to help people understand who you are, what you do and why it matters.
If that sounds like the kind of work you want to make, you can find out more below.