The Advisory Council will play an important role in supporting the Guild’s continued development and ensuring that the organisation remains focused on the needs and interests of our members and the wider Art Department community.
The Advisory Council will work alongside the Guild to guide our strategic goals and objectives and help steer the organisation.
The AC will provide advice, experience and insight to help shape the Guild’s direction, identify opportunities, consider the challenges facing our industry, and support the development of initiatives that benefit our members and strengthen the Guild’s position within HETV and Film.
Our Articles of Association allow for the Advisory Council to comprise up to seven AD Guild members and three non-AD Guild members.
The inclusion of non-AD Guild members is particularly valuable in bringing a broader industry perspective to the Council. These members may be professionals working within the wider HETV and Film industry and can represent relevant organisations and areas of expertise outside the immediate AD Guild membership. Their experience and perspective will help us build stronger connections across the industry and ensure that the Guild considers the wider production landscape in its strategic thinking.
We are delighted to put forward the following nominees for consideration at the AGM:
1st Assistant Director
Paul Murphy has over twenty years’ experience as a 1st AD, working in features, HETV and commercials. In that time, he has worked with both Oscar and BAFTA-winning cast, directors and production companies, and some of the productions he has collaborated on have themselves won BAFTAs, a fact of which he is very proud.
A member of the ADG since its inception, Paul has been a member of the ADG Regional Committee and, as a father to three neurodiverse children with disabilities, is very interested in avenues for strengthening inclusion and accessibility for all disabled and neurodiverse people already working within our industry, and for those with ambitions to do so.
2023 saw Paul’s first foray into producing. ‘Partygate’, which was commissioned by and screened on Channel 4, was a success with both critics and audiences alike. It was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Director and won Best Single Drama at the Royal Television Society Awards.
Paul is currently looking to cement his nascent producing work with his AD career, seeking opportunities to both 1st and associate produce HETV productions, to help strengthen & solidify his producing experience, as he continues to build his list of feature & HETV 1st AD credits.
2nd Assistant Director
Jo is a 2nd Assistant Director, working in film & drama, with over twenty years’ experience in the industry. Jo has been a member of the ADG Council since the start of its inception. During her time as a council member, she has enjoyed working on the development of the Guild, as it grows.
Jo is interested in education & training, developing outreach programmes, training and mentor opportunities for all members.
Jo also believes equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) within the industry is essential, and that the Guild can have a huge impact on enabling working environments, where every AD feels empowered to achieve their full potential.
1st Assistant Director
Over the last 15 years Jez has meticulously made his way through the AD department in HETV and features to become 1st AD, and has worked for the likes of BBC, ITV, Mammoth Screen, Netflix, Searchlight and Disney, to name but a few.
Jez has been the Co-Chair of the Education and Training committee for the ADG since its foundation, helping to ensure excellence in the training of UK ADs and maintaining the high standards for which our ADs are regarded worldwide. He is also a contributor and external tutor at the National Film and Television School.
1st Assistant Director / AD Guild UK Director
Richard has been actively involved with the AD Guild as a Council member and company director since its inception in 2020. Before this, he enjoyed a 25-year career as a 1st Assistant Director on a wide variety of commercials, film and HETV productions with directors such as Stephen Poliakoff, Beeban Kidron and Taylor Hackford.
Richard is a passionate advocate for the AD Guild and keen to advise and support the next chapter of its development with colleagues on the Advisory Council. He is keen to encourage the provision of more training and services for our Guild membership and to drive wider recognition and respect of the Assistant Directors’ craft and critical role in our industry.
Head of Industry Relations, Directors UK
Paul is the Head of Industry Relations for Directors UK. He has previously spent more than a decade working at Bectu, including five years as the Assistant National Secretary overseeing the London Production Division of the union which negotiated the Bectu/Pact agreements. In this role he helped to establish the AD Branch, and helped in the discussions that resulted in the founding of the ADG and the AD grading scheme itself. His final years at Bectu were spent as the union’s freelance researcher.
Prior to joining Bectu, Paul’s film industry-related work included four years as a researcher in the European Parliament, specialising in film and TV global trade for a Labour MEP. Other working roles have included being a founder and director of a software company, freelance work advising on media matters and organising policy conferences, and a period working as the Advertising Manager at The New Statesman.
2nd Assistant Director
Emmy is in her 9th year in the industry and has worked up from Floor Runner to 2nd AD, working on Band 2 budget productions.
In the past few years, Emmy has worked as 1st AD on second units, short films and indie features, as well as a chaperone, on the side; staying busy and working hard.
In between all her work, Emmy is also an active member of the ADG and is an advocate for new entries into the industry, as she found the support of experienced colleagues a huge asset to starting her career and would like to pass this onto others.
Emmy’s ambitions include becoming 1st AD and, some day, directing her own film.
Crew Development Manager | Liverpool Film Office
Helen spent 16 years working in the film and TV industry as an Assistant Director working her way up through the ranks from Runner to First Assistant across a wide range of production types, including Feature Films, High End TV, serial drama and Children’s TV.
Helen was a member of the AD Guild from its inception and took an active part in both the Equality and Diversity and Regional Committees. In 2023, Helen took an industry side-step and joined the Liverpool Film Office as Crew Development Manager. Helen’s role in the film office is to promote and advocate for local film and TV crew and deliver the Liverpool City Region Screen Workforce strategy.
Helen supports productions filming in the region to crew with local behind-the-scenes talent and manages the BFI-funded skills cluster activity with Screen Alliance North. Helen works across a variety of national projects with industry agencies including BAFTA, BFI, The Film and TV Charity, Production Guild UK, Bectu and BFC, as well as with numerous regional and national training providers.
Co-director at ReelTime Media
Michelle is co-director at ReelTime Media. She worked for 17 years as a Producer and Director in Unscripted Television, and since 2018 worked as ScreenSkills' HETV Manager, then at Share My Telly Job and since 2023 at ReelTime. Michelle’s expertise lies in her knowledge of job-sharing; she has devised and delivered multiple job-sharing programmes across Film, HETV and Unscripted for ScreenSkills, and is currently leading a job-sharing initiative with Crew HQ at WBSL. Michelle has guided organisations as wide-ranging as Netflix, STV, Bectu, Screen Alliance North and Talent Academies Ireland towards more inclusive working practices. She was a founding committee member of Bectu's Unscripted branch where she served as Women's officer for 3 years.
Michelle would be delighted to be considered for the ADG Advisory Council as since 2021, she has been particularly involved with developing frameworks that enable 2nd ADs to job-share. Her research has led her to consult with leading ADs in Germany, Ireland as well as the UK and she has found that the scale and intensity of the 2nd and Crowd 2nd AD role make it perfect to be shared, benefitting from the power of two brains, creatively solving problems together without burning out. She has now supported job-sharing 2nds and Crowd 2nds on HETV projects as varied as Protection, Funny Woman, Death Valley, Supacell, Waterloo Road, Applecross and the feature Wind of Change.
Michelle hopes to extend the practice of job-sharing to other AD roles and is excited to see how the practice can allow the AD department to be happier, healthier and more inclusive.
Co-founder of Leading Ladies (Female AD organisation)
Ellicia is a working 1st Assistant Director with over a decade in the industry, from shooting Christmas campaigns for M&S in the midst of summer and secret tech launches for Google, to a Sam Fender video that ended up on the A Level Media Studies syllabus and internet-breaking project for Stormzy. She loves the organised chaos of a film set and, most importantly, the people who make it happen.
After spending much of her early career as one of very few women on set, let alone in the AD department, Ellicia co-founded Leading Ladies: a community for women in film and TV to skill share, recommend each other for jobs, ask the questions they might not elsewhere and have a good time while doing it. It now has over 350 members, with every event selling out within days.
Building it sparked bigger questions about the industry we all love. Having never been to university, she went on to complete a Master’s at NFTS, researching a question she kept coming back to… we spend years getting good at our jobs, but when we step up and become responsible for leading people, who teaches us how? She has since been working on a leadership model specifically tailored to the unique environment of being on set.
Ellicia would bring to the ADG a perspective still firmly on the floor, an ear to the next generation and a desire to connect them with the enormous experience already within the Guild. She wants to help build an industry people want to stay in and remind us why we chose this slightly mad career in the first place.
The nominees will be formally presented to members at the AGM, where members will have the opportunity to hear more about the proposed Advisory Council and its role in supporting the Guild’s future direction.
We would encourage all members to attend the AGM and take part in this important next step for the AD Guild.
AGM Date: Wednesday 26 August 2026
Time: 18:00
We look forward to seeing you there and to continuing to build the Guild together.
