The last Mo Bot: Great North Run production company FilmNova talks about getting coverage of the famous half marathon onto global screens By Heather McLean Wednesday, September 6, 2023 - 16:42
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Sir Mo Farah is taking one last race in his stride at the Great North Run 2023
Arguably the world's largest half marathon, the Great North Run, takes place this weekend (Sunday 10 September). The run will be the last professional race of one of Great Britain's most successful living athletes, Sir Mo Farah who will be in the race to win with 60,000 other runners, pacing themselves along the 13.1-mile course from Newcastle to South Shields.
The event is a FilmNova production for BBC Sport. It will be bought to TV screens globally by a 45-strong production team made up largely of freelancers and that includes four editors, a media manager, five floor managers, and one stills photographer.
While Filmnova has been producing the Great North Run for over a decade, each year a different theme is bought in, which keeps the team on their toes. Matthew Coliandris, senior director at Filmnova, will be the director for the Great North Run this weekend. Speaking to SVG Europe, he comments: There are different themes in the 12 years we've been doing this race. This year it'll be Mo Farah's last ever race so that's the theme this year.
The planning that goes into [the race] is quite elaborate because being part of a wider company the Great Run Company that puts the event on we have a totally unique relationship whereby we work closer with the operations team and the marketing team all the different strands within Great Run we work hand in hand with them, whereas with so many other events that you might work on, you would be working with an LOC or a federation or organisation who've been making their own plans, and you don't actually put them all in place. [That can mean] they don't all marry up until you arrive on site, pretty much, whereas the Great Run Company is the complete opposite of that. I've had 30 meetings already about what we're going to do with Mo Farah with the rest of the company. Nothing's left to chance.
We understand as a TV production company that much more about event planning, and Great Run Company now understand that much more about TV requirements because of the relationship that we have and the mutual respect that we have with each other, continues Coliandris. So it may look like it's the same programme each year or it's the same template each year, but it really isn't. It's a movable feast.
That moveable feast was taken to extremes last year when the Queen died just days before the event, which drastically affected the entire plan. Says Coliandris: Last year the Queen died three days before the event, so we had to rip up the entire running order on Friday morning and start again. So doesn't matter how much planning you do, there'll be something that will come along to change your ultimate plan.
Coliandris adds: There's nothing left to chance on the Great North Run. It's the biggest deal for the Great Run Company, obviously, and it's pretty much the biggest deal for us as well so we don't leave anything to chance. Something could happen within 24 hours of the race someone might pull out, we might lose a human interest story from someone who's not competing for whatever reason but it's changes like that, we really can't plan for that sort of thing.
Mo's last mile
For the stories around Mo Farah this year, Coliandris says that there is a lot of content planned, yet he adds, I don't want to give too much away; it'll take too much thunder away, particularly from the Great Run in their operations team and their marketing team, so I'm not going to give you too many clues, but there's a lot planned for him at the start and finish and we have a plan to see more of him on the route, should he not be in the lead of the race .
[We will] redeploy a motorbike to go and find him, continues Coliandris. We have four motorbikes on the Great North Run, but obviously there are three races; there's a wheelchair race, a women's race, and a men's race. So those four motorbikes work over those three races, and they're all simultaneous; you have a plan about where the motorbikes are going to be at any one time. The whole 13 miles is carved up so that [each bike has] a role, but then their role changes once they finish their day job. So one of our motorbikes will be redeployed to go and find Mo for his last three miles, essentially.
He will stay in contention hopefully until the finish line, but the chances are that given that his legs are not as young as they were 10 years ago, during the last mile, he might fall back. Hopefully he doesn't, [as it would] make my job a hell of a lot easier!
We've got Amiee Fuller running as a reporter and it's the first time we've really attempted this. She's running with a producer and he's wearing a pace setter-style flag with big BBC branding all over it saying, come and tell us your story, come and be interviewed as you run
The leading packs, within which will hopefully be Farah, will be seen on camera running the last mile down what is a relatively straight road. Coliandris says: They come down onto the coast and the 12 mile mark is just after that turn, then our finish cameras can see everything from around about 500 metres out on the long lens, but we don't really cut to them until about 250 metres out. We stop the bikes before those fixed cameras. But of course the dilemma we face is that whereas the focus is on Mo, there is also a race going on and if it happens to be that the leaders are crossing the line while Mo is approaching the finish, well t
