Richard Mervyn Founding Director Richard Mervyn is the founder of Skyworks and the world's most experienced aerial producer/director/cameraman with over 4,000 hours aerial filming. Richard has a background of factual and arts programmes stretching from the late 70s. He wrote, directed and filmed ‘The Making of Britain’, which was entirely shot from the air for Channel Four with backing from Marks and Spencer - his imagery continues to be used in television programmes all over the world. Richard has pioneered a unique style of aerial filming, as both a Director and Cameraman, this allows Skyworks to operate at the highest levels of quality and efficiency.
	Damian Keogh Managing Director Damian oversees the company's overall operation, and looks after Skyworks’ day-to-day management. He is responsible for putting together co-production funding, deficit finance and programme sales. Damian has been at the heart of Skyworks’ restructuring and expansion, securing investment into the company and strengthening the company's asset base and value. He is particularly focused on the growth and exploitation of the HD archive library as well as the development and production of the company’s programming.
	Colin Mills Director As well as overseeing some of Skywork's technical operations, Colin is responsible for the marketing and sales of Skyworks, especially the Aerial HD Archive and also new technology products and ventures that Skyworks creates. Colin's background is the advertising industry, starting at Saatchis in London and thereafter with BBDO where he ran agencies in Lisbon, Moscow and Amsterdam, most recently returning to Moscow as CEO of ADV, the biggest marcom group in Eastern Europe.

The Skyworks Story (so far!)

Skyworks was started in 2002 by Richard Mervyn. The intention was to create a Television production company specialising in aerial filming. The company started producing several long running series of aerial journey shows for various regions of the UK Independent Television Network (ITV). These programmes allowed Skyworks to develop some unique skills in delivering high quality aerial TV material which was not only both technically and editorially excellent, but also delivered very efficiently in terms of flying time.

Damian Keogh was appointed Managing Director in 2004, and Skyworks began an archive footage operation, initially being distributed via Getty Images. At the same time, the BBC commissioned a drama documentary and initial series concerning the legendary author, walker and illustrator Alfred Wainwright and his walking guides to the English Lake District. This series achieved both critical and popular acclaim and propelled the career of the English TV presenter, Julia Bradbury.

The development of the ‘Walks format’ was rapid, with returning series being commissioned by the BBC for the Lake District Walks, followed by Canal Walks and Railway Walks, a UK coast to coast walk and foreign walks in South Africa, Germany and Iceland.  In addition a series of historical Norman Walks was produced with the presenter Dan Snow, again for the BBC.

While these shows were becoming very successful – two of the series achieving record viewership figures in their category  -  other factual shows were being produced, both for UK and international broadcasters.  Skyworks was also concentrating on building the archive business as well as delivering new formats and technologies. A number of countries in Europe were filmed for the archive and by 2010 some 12 countries had been extensively covered. During this period, Skyworks continued developing techniques which allowed for a much more detailed level of filming than is usual, the result being an extremely large volume of material for any given area – and the corresponding challenge in developing cataloguing and retrieval systems for this data.

Colin Mills joined Skyworks in 2008, and the company started developing applications and products with technological partners to allow for different distribution channels of Skyworks footage. The Skyworks archive now comprises hundreds of thousands of clips from thousands of hours of filming covering 3 continents. This footage may now be licensed via the company website, and content richness has been enhanced with various innovations which have taken place in the filming technology such as extensive use of GPS tracking and in-cockpit mini-cameras.

The MediaSavi™ framework – a sophisticated mapping user interface with embedded aerial video in the form of specially edited and geotagged Microclips™, is the latest generation of web-based delivery systems, also including mobile phone apps. In developing these products, Skyworks have been successful in winning grant funding from the UK Technology Strategy Board as well as the Open Screen Fund.

Following a project with the US based Smithsonian Channel to film ‘Aerial America’, Skyworks has filmed over 15 US States, most recently South Dakota in a unique joint agreement with SDPBS, State Tourism and Parks. In addition to this, Skyworks are producing a landmark series entitled “The World from Above” – this series of aerial journeys has well over 200 episodes planned and is already proving successful in international distribution.