Adventures in UK film, photography and design.
A festival programme is a timetable, a map, a souvenir and a small piece of engineering. We spent a week with the UK designers turning a hundred screens of cinema into something you can hold in one hand, read under a stairwell bulb, and still want to keep on the fridge in February.
Vinyl is cheap, fast and everywhere — except on a handful of British cinema frontages where signwriters still mix a film’s mood in enamel. We follow the brushwork, the weather and the stubborn economics keeping painted picture houses visible from the pavement.
In a converted grain store off a Home Counties lane, scenic artists still mix skies in buckets and paint horizons forty feet wide. Icarus Studios visits a working backdrop workshop to follow a cloud from pencil sketch to scaffold, and to ask why British directors and photographers keep ordering their weather by hand.
They are the first crew in and often the last to be noticed: the unit stills photographers who document British film sets while staying out of the frame. We look at the quiet craft of catching the unguarded moment, the lighting test, and the take that never made the final cut.
Britain is full of landmarks that exist only in planning reports, foam-board models and fading artist’s impressions. A field guide to shooting absence — and to honouring the ambitious schemes that never quite made it off the drawing board.
A wet-Tuesday tour of Britain’s analogue camera repair benches, where sticky shutters, fogged glass and inherited rangefinders are coaxed back into service. As the 2026 film-photography boom sends more old cameras out of lofts and into labs, the technicians behind the screwdrivers explain what to save, what to scrap and why a well-made dial still teaches modern image-makers a thing or two.
At the far end of the promenade, Britain’s pier theatres are part stage set, part salt-cured time capsule. We meet the volunteers repainting backcloths and learn how to photograph these tight, weather-beaten rooms without turning them into a sterile museum.
In 2026, most cinema screens are fed by hard drives and passwords. But in a handful of independent UK venues, projectionists are still threading celluloid, trimming splices and coaxing light through plastic. We spent an evening in the booth to find out what keeps the reels turning.
In workshops from Bristol to the Peak District, model-makers are still building tiny streets, aircraft and landscapes for film and advertising in 2026. Their tabletop worlds offer photographers a masterclass in patience, scale and controlled light.
Failure screenings are turning blown takes, collapsed props and abandoned shots into public creative R&D. Across the UK, filmmakers are discovering that the worst footage often teaches the most useful lessons — for film, photography and design alike.
Before the first scene, there is a handshake — a minute or two of typography, music and motion that tells an audience exactly what kind of film they have bought a ticket for. A look at the UK studios, animators and letterers who have quietly made that handshake one of our strongest exports.
Overcast skies, mist that swallows a hillside and rain that arrives sideways — our national weather is treated like an obstacle when it is really the most generous lighting rig in Europe. A field guide to shooting through it without drowning your kit or your enthusiasm.
Across UK cinemas and design studios, illustrated film posters are coming back — complete with misregistered inks, wobbly type and fingerprints. We talk to the artists and programmers betting on imperfection as an antidote to algorithm-shaped key art.
Abandoned airfields, flying-boat slipways and volunteer-run hangars offer some of the UK’s most atmospheric photographic adventures. Here’s how to shoot them with respect, patience and a decent pair of boots.
Libraries, leisure centres and council offices are not obvious backdrops, but their worn terrazzo, fluorescent corridors and stubborn civic optimism can carry a story better than any period set. A practical, ethically minded guide to scouting Britain’s overlooked public architecture for film and photo shoots in 2026.
Across studios, kitchen tables and risograph rooms, UK photographers are turning small-run zines into physical editions that refuse to scroll. A field guide to the 2026 zine scene, from sequencing and spot-colour printing to the fairs and swaps keeping print social.
In a British winter the sun never really gets up — which is precisely the point. A practical, slightly obsessive guide to the country's best low-light locations, the settings that work, and the strange pleasure of rearranging your week around a weather forecast.
British crews have been throwing themselves off things for a century — and somehow getting better at it. We spoke to stunt coordinators about the craft, the paperwork and the sheer nerve behind the UK's practical action tradition, plus what emerging filmmakers can borrow from it.