Patrick Uden

Patrick Uden was born in Orpington in 1946. His father was in the motor trade. He was brought up in the suburb of Bromley.

Between 1962 and 1965 he studied Design, first in a foundation course at Sidcup School of Art, then in Industrial Design, Animation & Graphics at Ravensbourne College of Art in Bromley.

In 1965 he joined Larkins Animation drawing and painting animated commercials.

He gained a scholarship to The Royal College of Art in 1966 where he studied animation and live-action film and television until graduating as a Master of Arts (MA) in Film & TV, ARCA in 1969. During this period he paid for his studies as a part-time paint-and-trace artist, including on Yellow Submarine and commercials for Barclays DCO. During college vacations he worked as an Assistant Director on television commercials and corporate films for James Garrett & Partners.

In 1970 he joined the BBC's Tomorrow's World production team as a film director and progressed as a staff producer/director through several innovative factual programmes including The Risk Business, QED and The Tuesday Documentary to establish a reputation as an efficient and creative programme maker culminating in 1977 with his visualisation of Jonathan Miller's 13-part series The Body in Question broadcast during 1978/9 in Britain, Canada, Australia and the USA.


From 1979 he directed six programmes for the BBC science series Horizon. None were about science. Instead Patrick insisted on pioneering programmes about technology & engineering for the strand: tanker design, racing cars, aerodynamics, product design and helicopter technology.

In 1980 Patrick became a media consultant to Ford of Europe, and was retained as a broadcasting consultant by the advertising production company, James Garrett & Partners.

In December 1981 Patrick resigned from the BBC, departing in March 1982 to establish his own production company; Uden Associates Ltd on 1 April. For its entire trading life the company was based in Chelsea Wharf - a brilliant, well-designed warehouse studio overlooking the River Thames in southwest London.

The company quickly established an unmatched reputation in the independent sector for intelligent and well-crafted programmes produced by a team of relatively young and enthusiastic film directors. Patrick devised programmes for Cutting Edge, Short Stories, Bookmark, Horizon, True Stories, QED, Secret Lives and he invented Channel Four’s science strand Equinox. In the process the company produced the highest ever rating documentary for Channel Four called A is for Accident (over 9-million viewers) and one of BBC1’s best remembered documentaries of all time called Johns Not Mad about a young Tourettes sufferer. In addition Patrick Uden personally directed short films for television like his highly acclaimed 1991 Building Sites for BBC2 with Sir Norman Foster about the Boeing 747.

Patrick executive produced Classic Cars for Channel Four and then in 1991 a six-part series on engineering called The Works for BBC2. The company devised and produced two follow-up series to Classic Cars for Channel Four called Classic Motorcycles and the quirky Classic Trucks. Patrick also devised and produced Uden Associates' major international eight-part series called White Heat - A Television History of Technology broadcast in 1994 by BBC Television and The Learning Channel.

He devised a three-part series for Channel Four's arts slot Without Walls on automobile design called AutoErotic and further ‘Classics’ series for Channel Four on ships and then trains. In 1995 Uden Associates Ltd achieved the DTI’s ISO 9001 for good management.

In the summer of 1996 Patrick returned to film directing with a six-part series for BBC2: Jonathan Miller’s Opera Works. After this he executive produced Jazz Heroes, Tackling Technology (for C4 Schools) and Classic British Cars, all for Channel Four.

Uden Associates also made two series of The Channel Five Car Show, Stephen Hawkings Universe for the BBC, The Spying Game, Classic Aircraft, John Peel’s Sounds of the Suburbs, Renegade Gets Dazed and many other groundbreaking series and individual programmes for Channel Four.

Patrick Executive Produced Shock of the Old, Piers Gough’s Guide to British Buildings, an Equinox about racing drivers’ reflexes called Quick and the Dead and Stephen Bayley’s Films of Fire called Car Wars - all for Channel Four; and Modern British Architects, Car Sex, Meet Thy Shaker, Buildings of the Future, Malice in Blunderland, The Most Evil Men in History, Madonna & Child, Conran – the Man Behind the Brand, Art Deco, The Gun, and Scream – A History of Anaesthetics for channel Five.

In early 2001 Patrick curated Exploring the City at The British Museum, an exhibition of the work of Norman Foster and Executive Produced the six-part Buildings of the Future for channel Five. Patrick has also written articles on industrial design for Blueprint, Design, Classic Bike, The Guardian and the American design publication ID.

Through its prize-winning corporate unit called UdenVision, Uden Associates produced a regular internal multilingual news programme for Ford of Europe (Ford Communications Network [FCN]), as well as audio-visual work and websites on technological and management issues for the Royal Mail, Amerada Hess, Williams Grand Prix Engineering, Benetton Formula, Shell, the Royal Automobile Club, Macmillan, Jaguar Cars, Aston Martin, British Telecom the Post Office, Laura Ashley, The Design Museum, Boots, Arup, Rolex of Geneva, Vodaphone, Hewlett Packard, Samsung and many other agencies and commercial companies.

Patrick closed Uden Associates Ltd on the 19th January 2004 (The four company directors of Uden Associates Ltd had remained with the business from the beginning to the end. The company formally trained over 600 youngsters and started the television careers of many others).

In February 2004 Patrick established uden-media ltd: a new ‘micro-indie’. This enabled Patrick to return to front-line programme making by selling his skills to broadcasters, production companies and corporate clients.

Through uden-media Patrick invented and was the driving force behind Channel Four’s BAFTA-award winning interactive FourDocs and was a consultant to the channel’s documentary and interactive department.

In 2004 Patrick developed a major architectural series for Channel Four in collaboration with Talkback’s Grand Designs brand - and piloted a daily live show with Janet Street-Porter for the Channel Four daytime schedules through Rarebreed Films (it was not a success!).

He has been the consultant executive producer on the factual entertainment series The Apprentice for BBC2 then BBC1 since it started, developing the weekly tasks and writing all the commentary scripts. Among other projects, Patrick has helped develop reality series for Diverse, Silver River, Mentorn, Princess and the BBC.

Patrick Executive Edited More4’s pioneering Hypnosurgery Live for Zig-Zag and the BBC1’s Comic Relief Does The Apprentice for Talkback and he also Executive Produced the second series of The Restaurant for the BBC, and acted as consultant on the third series.

Patrick Uden is on the board of the Independent Training Fund. He lectures on documentary film to media students and television professionals and is an enthusiast for on-the-job training for entry-level graduates (see: Free Advice on www.uden-media.com). He is a consultant to government ‘think tanks’ on creative media strategy and knowledge transfer.

Patrick's main interests outside the world of film and television are modern architecture & design, American jazz & blues, 20thCentury Industrial & Military History, post-war Italian motorcycles and urban cycling.

He enjoys motorcycle maintenance and recently built a Citroen 2cv. He is an avid follower of the technical developments in Formula One motor racing.

Patrick and his writer/film director wife Sheila Hayman have a 16-year old son called Frank and 13-year old daughter called Dorothy.

They share an award-winning house in Camden that Patrick commissioned in 1986 from the ‘constructivist’ architect, David Wild.

In 2010 Patrick co-founded Heuristic-Media Ltd (www.heuristicmedia.tv) in London with three colleagues; one in Southern France and two in California, to produce super-apps for the Apple iPad. The results have won coveted awards and set the standards for such apps in the fast developing world of tablet computers.



www.uden-media.com/