| Mike Loades - Director |
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Mike specialises in high end, scripted drama reconstructions for historical documentaries. He is up-to-date with the latest High Definition technology and experienced in composing shots with jibs and dollies. He has done extensive night shoots as well as interiors and studio work, including green screen. He has directed both small and large crews.
Over the years he has had experience in virtually every aspect of production both on screen and behind camera. He is aware of every department’s needs and their potential to contribute to the overall picture and takes great care to work with the art department, wardrobe and make-up as well as the camera crew and the talent. He is aware of the constraints of tight budgets and always has ingenious solutions to maximise screen value. USS Constellation - Battling for Freedom "The triumph of this piece is the re-enactments. What Director Mike Loades does in this film is actually transport you back to another place and time" David Zurawick of The Baltimore Sun on WYPR FM
The Hunt for Lincoln's Assassin Broadcast: National Geographic Channel 2007 The Plot to Kill Reagan
The Plot to Kill Jesse James Warrior Queen Boudica
VIDEOS: Mike wrote, produced and directed these videos in the early nineties. They have been a huge success, winning both critical acclaim and selling tens of thousands of copies worldwide. They are still available on VHS through his own production company RUNNING WOLF PRODUCTIONS. The Blow By Blow Guide To Swordfighting
Archery - Its History and Forms |
This two-hour drama/doc special was filmed on Tall Ships off the Cornish coast and tells the story of the US Navy’s African Squadron hunting down an illegal slave ship in 1859. It was filmed in High Definition and includes dramatic helicopter footage of the sea chase. Interior scenes on the gun deck were filmed aboard HMS Warrior in Portsmouth and scenes from the African jungle were filmed at The Lost Gardens of Heligan. It is a disturbing and moving film. 
A one-hour special in High Def tracking the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth, after his assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The story, shot largely at night, follows Booth from the shooting at Ford’s Theatre in Washington as he tries to escape through Maryland and Virginia. Booth, the most celebrated actor of his day, was a handsome and debonair figure. A staunch Confederate he thought to prolong the war by Lincoln’s assassination. Aided by David Herold, an associate who idolised him, Booth was on the run for nearly two weeks. He broke his leg in a fall immediately after the murder, which hindered his ability to ride. He and Herold took a small boat to cross the Potomac River but got hopelessly lost. Finally, cornered in a tobacco barn, he was smoked out and shot. It is a chase movie and a portrait of a man who had it all and then threw it all away.
A one-hour special filmed in High Def. The story centres on John Hinckley Jnr and his obsessions with Jodie Foster, the film Taxi Driver and guns. It chronicles his gradual mental deterioration in the months preceding his failed assassination attempt on President Reagan in 1987 and includes recreated scenes of the shooting which were intercut with archive footage. It is an intense and dark psychological drama. 
A one-hour special in High Def telling the story of Bob Ford - the man who shot Jesse James. Here is the hero of popular imagination - Jesse James, the outlaw – a man with charismatic dash. There are posse chases, stagecoach hold ups and bank raids. But here is also the dissolute and degenerating Jesse. Jesse the bully and Jesse the egotistical tyrant who so oppressed the young Bob Ford, that Ford’s adulation and respect gradually metamorphosed into resentment, jealousy and hatred. After the assassination, Bob and his brother Charlie were pardoned, by pre-arrangement with the Governor, but they felt the sting of public opprobrium. Charlie Ford committed suicide and Bob’s fortunes sunk to an ever lower ebb until he, too, was shot in an act of vengeance. 
Mike was Second Unit Director and Action Arranger on this two-hour High Def special, when it filmed in Romania but took over as First Unit Director for a two-day shoot in the U.K. It tells the story of the Iceni Queen Boudica and her doomed uprising against the Romans in 60 AD.
This video, presented by Mike, combines historical documentary with practical instruction. It teaches the techniques of Renaissance combat and looks at the history of swordfighting. Scenes from the modern day classroom intercut with recreated fights and museum treasures. (96 minutes)
Tracing the history of the bow from Neolithic times to the present day, this video uses beautifully recreated scenes with over 30 vignettes of different historical periods. It encompasses archery for war, hunting and recreation. (72 minutes)
