- 01/06/2010 - 14:29
- 09/04/2010 - 14:29
- 01/04/2010 - 13:40
- 15/02/2010 - 17:10
- 08/02/2010 - 14:45
- 08/02/2010 - 13:17
- 17/11/2009 - 12:37
- 12/06/2009 - 16:34
- 09/03/2009 - 17:07
- 09/03/2009 - 16:39
Latest News
Search
Adastra's team
Mellie Buse - Company Director
Mellie Buse is a highly experienced writer, producer and voice director. She began her career in audio publishing, producing Radio programmes across a number of genres – audio books, drama documentaries and dramatised children's stories. She wrote, abridged and adapted hundreds of audio programmes for Penguin, BBC Worldwide, Random House, Orbis and Orion many of which won prestigious industry awards. Mellie also wrote and produced a host of corporate programmes and training programmes for companies. The most comprehensive body of work was a series of nine fully dramatised Roald Dahl Titles for Penguin Audio which she dramatised, produced and directed.
Mellie began working in television as a writer on The New Adventures of Captain Pugwash and this was followed by Mopatop's Shop a live action show for the Jim Henson company. She wrote on various series for HIT Entertainment including Angelina Ballerina and The Magic Key, along with a number of programmes for BBC Education. She then landed the Head Writing/Series Producer role on Jim Henson's The Hoobs - a 250 half hour live action pre-school show for Channel 4 which won the BAFTA for Best Pre-School live action show. Latterly, Mellie went to Sydney to Exec Produce a Henson/Yoram Gross co-production - Bambaloo. She has also worked on all three series of Charlie and Lola as Script Editor/Pre-School consultant.
Jan Page - Company Director
Jan Page is a scriptwriter, producer and published novelist whose career spans over twenty years. She has been part of the team of many highly successful pre-school shows, including The Tweenies, The Hoobs, Little Robots, Fimbles, Thomas the Tank Engine and The Large Family (lead writer/story editor Series 7), notching up several hundred screenwriting credits. One of her Angelina Ballerina scripts for HIT entertainment won the 2004 Indie Award for Best Animation. Jan also scripted several episodes of the daytime medical drama Doctors (BBC), and a 90-minute live action with CGI animation film based on E. Nesbit's Book of Beasts for Lupus Films. She has helped to develop television projects for Independents including HIT Entertainment, the Jim Henson Company and Novel Entertainment.
Before moving into television, Jan worked as an arts manager, programming and producing large scale arts events and festivals for Birmingham City Council. She co-founded the Big Brum, now the UK's leading theatre-in-education company and was Arts Council of England Playwright in Residence at Swansea University. Jan wrote two full-length musical adaptations of Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast for the New Victoria Theatre in Stoke and has published six fiction paperbacks for children and teen readers. Her latest novel Selina Penaluna was published in May 2008 (Random House).
Anna Starkey - New Media Producer
With a first class honours degree in Physics and a MSc in Science and Communication. Anna Starkey's career began as a Researcher for a BBC Horizon documentary on parallel universes! She then moved to HIT Entertainment where she worked as a script-editor on three animated series - Pingu, Rubbadubbers and Angelina Ballerina and was producer on a number of series both in development and production. Anna left HIT in 2005 to pursue a freelance career which to date has included scriptwriting and voice-direction on Tiger Aspect's Charlie and Lola, and team writer on Guess with Jess for Entertainment Rights. She also worked as UK Particle Physics Outreach Officer for the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, communicating particle physics across all media to the general public, schools, universities and decision makers in government.
Anna Starkey is also a stand up comedy performer, who has appeared at the Canal Café Theatre, London, Downstairs at the Kings Head and the Edinburgh Festival. Her double-act Wix and Starks was a semi-finalist in the 2002 Daily Telegraph Open Mic Award. Anna sings alto with the London Philharmonia Chorus and the Philharmonia Chamber Choir, performing regularly at prestigious venues such as the Royal Albert Hall, with internationally renowned orchestras and conductors.
Adastra Associates
Richard Bradley - Television Director / Producer
Richard Bradley initially trained as a sound recordist at ATV Elstree/Birmingham Studios working on a variety of programmes including The Muppet Show. After internal promotion to Programme Director and training on shows including Tiswas, Crossroads, and Dramarama, Richard spent two years working in the Children's department at Central TV before moving into Entertainment and Daytime. He left Central in 1989 to pursue a freelance career. Richard is now an experienced Producer/Director working across a wide range of television projects including Daytime / Comedy / Entertainment / Music and Young Peoples programmes. His numerous credits include Director on This Morning for ITV/Granada Productions; Director, the live children's Sunday morning show, Smile for BBC2/Darral Macqueen; Director, the award winning series Art Attack for CITV/Media Merchants; Co-producer and Lead Director on the award winning pre-school series The Hoobs Channel 4/The Henson Company; Director, The Ministry Of Mayhem live Saturday morning show for CITV/The Foundation; Director, The Crunch daily live entertainment for Nickelodeon; Director on the award winning series Blockbusters classic kids quiz show and Spitting Image for ITV/Carlton.
Angus Fletcher - Business Consultant
Angus Fletcher has worked as an Executive in the global television business for some two decades. He has enormous cross-genre experience, from children's programming to drama, and is particularly well versed in the creation, production, management and exploitation of brands and franchises for the children's and family markets. In the last eight years, he has won one British Academy (BAFTA) Award and been nominated for two others. His programming has been nominated for, and won, many other awards around the world including Canada's Geminis and US Int'l Emmys.
Fletcher started his own company, Snow River Media Ltd. in 2004 and completed production on Five Minutes More, a 65 part pre-school series as a co-production between his own company and Dandy Buster Productions in Sydney, Australia for the ABC and Disney/Buena Vista Int'l. Currently he is working with Digital Outlook Studios Ltd. to develop and produce new forms of digitally driven IP for the web, broadband, IPTV and beyond. Fletcher / Snow River Media Co have a television production deal with RDF Media and consults for RDF's Children's production group and the international exploitation of programming. Until late 2003, Fletcher served as President of Jim Henson Television, Europe and joint President of the global TV Group.
Martin Franks - Development Producer
Martin has a drama background with experience in theatre, radio and television. He runs his own multi media company – Maxmedia - specialising in corporate and educational programming for all platforms. He has worked as a producer/director for 15 years and his skills as a kids' director are highly prized. Many of his projects have involved child casts and he is currently directing What's Your News! for Nick Jnr, featuring children from the age of 10 months upwards. This is a mixed live action/motion caption production using the very latest in digital puppetry and motion capture techniques. Martin has an extraordinary ability to get really natural performances out of the most challenging child actors! He has worked a great deal for Pearson Education producing English Language programmes for overseas markets. These have included sitcoms, documentaries and dramas. He has also directed commercials and corporate training programmes. Martin is a very experienced voice director and has worked for all the leading publishers producing over 200 audio book titles including Michael Palin's books for the BBC. Many of his productions have won Industry awards in both adult and children's categories. In addition to the directing and producing work, he holds regular exhibitions of his digital photography work which sells both here and in The States.
Mooey Alibey - Production Manager
Mooey; whose real name is actually Mueser and which is pronounced ‘Moo-A-zer’ is the newest member of the Adastra Creative team.
Mooey started her career in music television as an intern for music channels MTV and VH-1 but moved into the world of animation production a year later. It was at the BAFTA Award winning company; Collingwood O’Hare Entertainment where Mooey got her first taste of working for a successful animation studio. Under the guiding wing of Christopher O’Hare and Tony Collingwood; Mooey worked her way up from runner to Production and Development Coordinator. She worked on a number of children’s favourites such as Dennis the Menace; Animal Stories; Eddy & the Bear; TV feature The King’s Beard; Yoko! Jakamoko! Toto! Gordon the Garden Gnome and The Secret Show. She left Collingwood O’Hare in 2007, after 11 years of service to join Lupus Films as Production Coordinator. There; Mooey worked on the CGI re-vamp of The Pinky & Perky Show for the BBC as well as two non-broadcast pilots. She is now the Production Manager for Adastra Creative and is finding it a welcome break to be working with real actors as opposed to those of an animated persuasion with the exception of a pocket sized Grandpa.
