About
Two people, a van and a winter
Night Shift is made by a camera operator and a sound recordist who both grew up two streets from the dock gates.
How it started
From one favour to a series
2023
A four-minute film about the pilot boat, made as a favour and put online without a title.
2024
Forty thousand people watched it. Eleven of them wrote to say their own job was stranger.
2025
A small arts grant paid for a second camera and the insurance a port requires.
2026
Six episodes out, two in the cut, and the first screening in a cinema rather than a phone.
How it is made
Five rules we have not broken yet
No narration
Nobody explains the work over the top of it. If it is not clear on screen, we filmed it badly.
Available light only
Whatever the sodium lamps, the cab screens and the cold store give us. We bring nothing to light with.
One shift, start to finish
We arrive when they clock on and leave when they clock off. No second night to pick up what we missed.
Nobody is paid to appear
And nobody is filmed who has not read and signed the one-page agreement first.
Free, and it stays free
The grant paid for the cameras. The films themselves do not need to earn anything back.
The crew
Everyone who makes it
A camera operator
Shoots and edits
Fourteen years in news before this, which is where the habit of filming in the dark comes from.
A sound recordist
Records and mixes
Does the finding as well as the recording: every subject so far arrived through a conversation, not an email.
A colourist
Grades each episode
Comes in for two days an episode and makes the sodium light look the way it actually feels.
Stills
Six frames from the winter
Terminus, 01:40 
Dock Road, 03:15 
Berth four, 02:00 
The market, 03:00 
Cold store, minus twenty-four 
Harbour mouth, 23:50
Shown at
- Harbour Lights Documentary Days
- Northern Short Film Week
- The Quay Cinema
- Working Lives Festival