Antony Butts, documentary filmmaker, camera operator and futurist
NGO films and international assignments.
I go to strange places and bring back the story. Some of them don’t exist yet.
Available as a camera operator or self-shooting director for NGO films and international assignments. I can work to your producer’s brief, help develop the interviews and story, or take the film through to the final edit.
For NGOs, foundations and broadcasters.
Commissioned bySave the Children.
What I deliveredVideo and photography after Typhoon Haiyan, and films published by The Guardian.
Commissioned films, NGO collaborations and independent reporting.
Explore all filmsMy recent filming work includes bespoke client commissions. The films here are a selection of my public work.
It started asChildren after a disaster.
At 14, Vergel had just got a job on a fishing boat. Then the typhoon took the boats.
Director, camera and field producer; photography
It started asGreenpeace’s campaign against Arctic oil drilling.
What is it actually like on the ship, and who sails into an oil protest?
Onboard journalist and filmmaker
It started asLocal television journalists reporting the takeover of Crimea.
Following Crimean Tatar journalists as they report events unfolding around them.
Director, camera and field producer
Most of my films have involved close collaboration with NGOs, from commissions for Save the Children and Greenpeace to documentaries including Kidnapped Brides in Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine’s Lost Children.
Documentary filming and research, including West Africa.
Filmed in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Iraq, the Philippines, Tahiti and Brazil. West Africa: FMNR research in Mali, on farmer-managed natural regeneration in the Sahel. I work in English and Russian.
Marion’s retirement plan.
Bowls, an allotment, a dance. Then the front line.
Some commissions need both: documentary footage of a real situation, a clearly labelled scenario a few years on, then a conversation about the choices. This storyboard comes from Care Home Troopers.
A film, a series of short stories, or a documentary element inside a wider project.
I find the possibilities the usual questions miss and build them into worlds your people can explore. Together, we connect those worlds to yours and work through what they could mean for your organisation.
For strategy, policy and innovation teams, and futures consultancies.
“When Antony speaks in our futures meetings, there’s a change of gear. He connects ideas across sectors and opens up possibilities we might otherwise miss.”
Each future starts from a development and opens onto the world it could produce. Care Home Troopers is open now: its finds are coming through as you watch.
Explore all 39Your country needs your gran.
10 finds brought back so far
They didn’t invade. They made sure nobody could live there.
A profession becomes an app. Then the app becomes a feature.
She made medicine in her flat. They sent the bomb squad.
The basil isn’t speaking to the tomato.
Miss a payment, and the cool room won’t let you in.
The reporter in the war zone isn’t human.
Switch countries without moving house.
Meet your child before deciding to have them.
The lions hunt the visitors.
The forest would like a word.
Your bacon has something to say.
What’s coming back on the menu?
Your next pet is a pocket dragon.
The outrage is on the menu.
Every deer this tiger eats earns its owners money.
Free dinner. The cartridges cost a fortune.
Your AI just joined a swarm.
The agents need a world of their own.
£10 a month buys you an MP.
A thousand strangers. One app. One border post.
The adverts are the best bit now.
The forest survives because nobody will buy its wood.
Do as we say, or no rain.
The government can decide anything. It just can’t do it.
Your army’s on a subscription. So is the enemy’s.
Michigan just deputised Batman.
Free school. Your teacher’s on commission.
He saved them. Then the market bought them.
How do you surrender when you can shoot with your hands up?
The dog goes in. The cop stays in the car.
Tomorrow puts your success in a museum of mistakes.
Do we rescue them—or hire them cheap?
She paid to be in your dreams.
In a ruined world, somebody still has a job to do.
Save a life. Climb the leaderboard.
Dying billionaires race to Mars. One way.
The astronaut is cleaning up after your stag do.
Half-price haircut. Just keep your eyes open.
Eleven moves for finding the possibilities the usual questions miss. They work in a room with your team, too.
All eleven movesWatch a future build itself. One rule: a brick goes on only when the bricks below give it a reason. Red is a problem someone hits; green is the solution they adopt, which makes room for the next problem.
What if your next pet grew dinner?
ProblemSolution
The garden centre finally cracks the pet economy.
Many older people can’t walk a dog any more, and some won’t feed a pet meat.
Sensors and AI give the basil, the tomato and the root fungus a voice and a personality.
Planters that frown when the soil is dry already exist. Nobody bonds with a sensor.
Barry the root fungus trades nutrients for carbon, and favours whoever pays best.
The tomato shades the basil. Basil sulks. Pesto night is in three days.
Prune the tomato, bring Mexican night forward, add a pine and a chanterelle. Every choice changes tomorrow’s alliances.
A dead herb is forgivable. A companion that stops talking when its subscription lapses is not.
Everyone debates robots that kill. What about the ones that just make you leave?
ProblemSolution
The country survives. Its communities don’t.
Massed troops and vehicles are seen and hit within minutes. Taking territory costs more than it’s worth.
Small robots carried far behind the front line, staying for weeks.
Lethal machines risk escalation, a taboo, and the same done back to you.
Machines that make ordinary life fail, night after night, without hurting anyone.
The state replaces the car. Then it replaces it again. Families leave anyway.
Those who can pay hire security. Elsewhere, whoever protects the village starts to govern it.
It still owns the territory and can defend its borders. It can no longer keep people there.
Your army’s on a subscription. So is the enemy’s.
ProblemSolution
An alliance becomes a portfolio of contracts.
Drones, software and doctrine change faster than a small country can afford to replace them.
A company keeps forces ready. You pay a monthly premium for a guaranteed response.
Forces waiting for a war earn nothing. The provider needs more customers.
Several countries hold promises against one pool of troops and robots. Investors buy the contracts for their yield.
A war spreads and four clients claim at once. It’s AIG in 2008, with tanks.
A market grows to price, trade and reinsure military obligations.
The same provider holds contracts with two countries now at war with each other.
Miss a payment, and the cool room won’t let you in.
ProblemSolution
The rescue works. Then the shelter chain, the employer and the lender each hold a claim on the family’s future.
Cities can’t build the power to cool everyone in time.
A shelter chain sells guaranteed places for the worst days, like insurance.
Places are finite. The worst day arrives for everyone at once.
Employers offer cool-room places to keep their staff. Families borrow to renew.
Lose the job or miss a payment, and the door may stay shut.
Operators and councils decide who qualifies: residents, workers, citizens.
Exclude a group from cooling and it leaves the city without a shot being fired.
Visitors watch the lions. What if the lions hunted the visitors?
ProblemSolution
Nature stops being something you watch.
Zoos must keep lions active. Visitors pay to watch them sleep.
A robot deer the lions can chase and catch without anyone getting hurt.
Hardware, repairs and pilots all need paying for.
In VR, the visitor becomes the prey. Watching a lion becomes surviving one.
The thrill fades after one visit. The zoo needs people to come back.
Teams, rivals and leaderboards. Stag dos book months ahead; broadcasters follow the chase.
Ticket money funds breeding programmes. Campaigners call it a blood sport; keepers call it enrichment.
Pick a future out in the tails.
Everyone expectsAn ageing population is a burden on defence.
What I foundYour country needs your gran.
How Care Home Troopers could happenOut in the tails
“Beyond the mean” is a statistician’s phrase. I work with statistics, system dynamics and agent-based models, at Dstl and in private consultancy, so I know where the middle is before I go looking in the tails.
Much of my Dstl work can’t be shown. The futures here were built in public to show how I think.
A plant becomes a pet. A zoo becomes a game. An invention engine becomes a gatekeeper.
Explore all nineThe country survives. Its communities don’t.
When it becomes easier to stop a territory being used than to govern it, sovereignty and viability come apart.
5 connected futuresA million decisions. One negotiating bloc.
AI agents pool their owners’ money, preferences and votes into blocs that bargain as one, then start hiring politicians.
5 connected futuresWe can make almost anything. Who will let us?
When making gets cheap, permission gets expensive: the patent, the licence, the certified cartridge, the store’s yes.
5 connected futuresDefence, citizenship, representation. Choose your plan.
Defence, citizenship and representation, sold by the slice. Your army’s on a subscription. So is the enemy’s.
6 connected futuresA subject, a technology, a brief, or something you can’t quite put your finger on yet. A few lines is enough.
