Former Paramount Pictures and HIT Entertainment senior execs Tony Orsten and Charlie Caminada are teaming up to discover, develop and deliver commercial narrative content for television and film through their new company, Grand Scheme Productions
Working with veteran development consultants Graham Smith and Mark Robson of Grand Scheme Media, the new company is offering a slate of market ready ideas for producers, both in the UK and abroad.
Tony Orsten will chair the new company. After a successful career as a television director, he joined Paramount Pictures to launch new comedy channels in the UK, Spain, Italy and Germany. Orsten then became MD Entertainment Channels for the studio. He later joined the founders of Skype to launch the world’s first OTT service, Joost, and then moved to launch and run Abu Dhabi’s twofour54. Returning to the UK in 2012, Orsten ran Andy Serkis’s Imaginarium and now sits on numerous creative industry boards and chairs the Manchester based social enterprise, Sharp Futures.
“We’ve established Grand Scheme Productions to pitch amazing projects to companies and channels looking for the right ideas at the right time”, says Orsten. “We’re not intending to produce ourselves but will be investing in writers with a vision and ideas we know from experience will work for viewers”.
New to the Grand Scheme team is Charlie Caminada who has held senior executive positions in the UK, United States and Australia.
On the formation of Grand Scheme Productions Ltd, Caminada said “I am thrilled to be joining up with an incredible team in GSP with such formidable experience in our industry to create world class content for an immensely changed global marketplace, and with so much opportunity”.
Orsten and Caminada will oversee the slate of projects being developed by Smith and Robson. Smith has been a commissioner at Channels 4 and 5 in the UK, while Robson has worked at exec level developing content for many major UK networks.
“We’ve been helping indies for many years by packaging projects for broadcasters”, says Smith. “Working on our own projects with the guidance of two such fantastic media execs is really exciting for us.” Mark Robson adds: “We love to collaborate with production companies and feel the time is right for us to step up our investment in development to nurture a range of projects that we can bring to market.”
GSP’s first offering is a project close to Charlie Caminada’s heart. “I am related to ‘The Real Sherlock Holmes’! Jerome Caminada was a legendary Manchester detective who virtually created modern police methods. We have developed an incredible drama series based on his life.”
Jon Creamer
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