ANDBC - Welcome Home, Rhys

The Mission: Rhys McClenaghan came home from Paris 2024 an Olympic champion, and Ards and North Down Borough Council threw him a homecoming in Newtownards. One shot at it, no second take.

The Execution: Civic events are unrepeatable, so the planning matters more than the shooting. I covered the day as it happened — the crowd, the walk, the speeches, the faces of people who'd watched him grow up — working observationally rather than to a fixed shot list.

Having directed Chasing Gold, the BBC One film that followed Rhys towards this exact moment, I knew what the day meant to him and roughly where to be standing when it landed.

The Result: A record of a homecoming that the borough gets to keep — and one of four projects delivered directly for Ards and North Down Borough Council.