Antony ButtsDocumentary filmmaker, camera operator and futuristLet’s talk

Camera operator and self-shooting director.

Available for documentary and NGO productions, working to your producer’s brief or helping develop the interviews and story. Based in Hastings, UK; working internationally, in English and Russian.

Join your production.

You may already have the producer, the access and the story. Bring me in to film it, alongside your country team or local crew. Or involve me earlier to work through the interviews, contributors and scenes the film needs.

As a self-shooting director, I can combine filming with the interviews and story development. If the assignment also needs an edit, I work in Premiere, Final Cut Pro and DaVinci Resolve. We agree the role and delivery around your production.

Documentary experience behind the camera.

I have filmed and directed more than 25 broadcast documentaries. My credits include director of photography on Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, and director, co-producer and cinematographer on DIY Country.

For Save the Children, I gathered video and photography after Typhoon Haiyan and made films for The Guardian. For Greenpeace, I worked as the onboard journalist on the Arctic Sunrise. These assignments combined the practical demands of fieldwork with finding individual stories inside a larger event.

Working internationally.

Four years in Russia, a year in Kyrgyzstan and a year on a former Soviet nuclear test site taught me to stay long enough for people to become themselves in front of the camera. In Crimea, I filmed local journalists as they reported events in their own community.

My work in West Africa includes research in Mali on farmer-managed natural regeneration. That research sits alongside my international filming experience, with each project and my role described in the portfolio and biography.

Send the filming brief.

Include the destination, dates or travel window, the team already involved, and the filming and delivery you need. An indicative budget is useful. My recent filming work includes bespoke client commissions; the public films here give you a way to assess my approach.

Tell me what you’re working on.

The subject, the people involved, your timescale and what you need to make.

Start the conversation