Being great believers in big love we work hard to develop alliances with the top people in their paddock. Everyone here is mentioned for one of two reasons. We owe them money, or they owe us lunch.

The Grass Roots Group

We have a very close alliance with Grass Roots producing all forms of creative media for their dazzling client base, as well as acting in a consultancy role as and when required. Having conquered Europe and The Americas their acquisitive Chairman was last seen sending his men East, even further than Kent. Grass Roots describe themselves as a company that ‘helps clients achieve their corporate goals by influencing their employees, partners and customers. We do this by enabling people to understand their role more clearly; to learn how to perform it better; to achieve higher levels of effort and performance.’
We are not sure we fully understand, but it sounds well impressive. We look cleverer in their presence, so we stick close by…
www.grg.com

Square Peg

There have been suggestions recently in the media (The Faringdon Folly, free from Budgens Faringdon every third Wednesday except in August when the editor goes to Marbella for a month), that becoming a 'Friend' of Juice is easy. And that we're so short of friends that we just make them up willy-nilly (every website needs a 'willy-nilly' buried away somewhere - the BBC site has 19 pages of them! We can only dream). Anyway, as always we're five lines into the story and you've either a) lost interest and clicked on the BBC website to see if we're lying (here's a handy link to help you)
www.bbc.co.uk/willynilly

or b) rushed off to Budgens because it's Wednesday. Whatever, it's scurrilous nonsense, because actually Square Peg had to succumb to our advances and flog us some shares to get them a spot in the sought after place that is Friends of Juice. So, we're delighted to announce that the Peggers, clever creative lot who do planning, strategy, concepts, copy, artwork, design, consultancy blah blah have thrown their lots in with us in a kind of Love Juice kind of love-in kind of thing way.
Check them out, you'll actually get some useful information quite quickly without having to read any more of this crap.…
www.wearesquarepeg.com

Lester ‘Love Machine’ Perkins

What Phil 'The Bald' is to North Face so Lester 'Love Machine' is to Abercrombie and Fitch. It has been suggested that he was solely responsible for their recent decision to open a flagship store in London (although as Lester regular flies to the States and smuggles his purchases back into the UK through customs it will soon be seen as a falsehood). Actually the Love Machine is a highly talented Director, writer, Producer and raconteur (in his dreams) and works with us in between shopping trips and short stays at Her Majestys Pleasure. His mail bag sowing has to be seen to be believed. So neat for such fat little fingers. Lester has recently married someone else's childhood sweetheart, and now resides in the burning suburbs of Los Angeles.

Phil ‘The Bald’ Astbury

Phil is probably the worlds most annoying person, and whilst that might come as a shock to a normal human, he would probably wear that badge with pride. Not only is he dazzling talented and thin, but he has perfected the art of wearing a North Face fleece beeny in all climates. Phil has worked with us for several years now and has pretty much singlehandedly transformed both the look of our work and our clients expectations. He has also recently invested in RED technology, which for those that don't know is an astonishing ultra high definition camera that he insists means that you could shoot a toilet door and it would amazing. It'll be worth checking back on our stories pages soon for lots of toilet door footage. Let's hope Jewsons call.

Shoot HD/Paul Hellard

The thing about sound recordists is that their whole lives are spent with headphones clamped to their pretty little heads listening to other people gabbling on. We like people listening to us, especially when it appears they are pleased with what we are saying (that doesn't happen often for those of us who have to talk to the bank manager (or Mr Miserable as he currently calls himself)). We have in the past seriously considered employing one to sit in the corner of the office and occasionally nod encouragingly, but paying for that sort of acclaim seems a bit over the top and could be tricky to explain to the accountant (who already thinks we're dodgy). And Range Rover Sport driving, designer black everything wearing Mr H is clearly not the budget option. But he's a very fine sound recordist and as such has received many expressions of love from all of us here over the years, some of them have really touched him in unusual ways. If he had a website I would list it here, but he doesn't as everything is done by sound (like in the golden olden days)

DWP

It quickly became clear when we started this business a few years ago now that we were surrounded by cleverer people than us. Whilst naturally we try to hide this fact (here it is buried away just beyond the viewable area where I hope that the scroll bar doesn't work properly) it's obvious that Brian and Gary who started DWP around the same time as we started Juice are the living embodiment of 'more clever'. The evidence is compelling. They are better looking (especially Brian), funnier (Gary), have more staff and a more pimped up office (check out the pictures on the top floor). They drive X5's and have both managed to persuade the courts that they need to drive really fast in them all of the time. Their office is in walking distance of a Starbucks (we have to make do with an electricity substation), and they clearly did a deal with Aldi for a load of those electronic picture frame things that your granny would love for Christmas. Oh, and they run wicked events for people like Sony Playstation.
www.dobsonwhite.com

Grant Branton

A serious operator in the field Grant is always busy unless we mention the word 'InterContinental'. He somehow manages to drop everything at two days notice to fly Business Class around the world, staying in 5 star luxury and keeping Phil out of jail. Suitably bald to fit in with our rigidly enforced hairline policy (and when working with Lester and Phil presenting more than a passing resemblance to that classic rock band 'Right said Fred', but worrying fit and healthy (we'll work on that), Grant has a wealth of experience not only of production around the world, but also of property development on the South coast of England. Handy if you need an overpriced executive apartment near Brighton.

Bruce Windwood

Very clever writer, presenter and general filmy person, Bruce has a lot to answer for in the success of many of our recent projects. A chap of many talents, not only can he can make the dullest of subjects sound interesting, he also combines driving a £100 Mondeo (which cost £500 to get through the MOT) and living in a country manor. Any resemblance to Tintin is purely a trick of the light, and any suggestion he is unsure of his sexuality may well lead to legal action. Bruce has recently declared squatters rights on a desk we temporarily left unattended in our office, and has subsequently drunk so much of our FairTrade coffee that we have probably paid for three village schools to be built in the developing world.
www.brubert.com

Leo Bund

Known round these parts as ‘The Thing’ Leo is unquestionably the finest Steadicam operator south of the M4, west of the M3, and east of the A34 (until it crosses the A303 near Andover). Having said that, the competition isn’t that fierce in that particular square metre.
In truth, The Thing is just a rather annoyingly fine Steadi-op and has been responsible for many of the very best shots we have pulled off over the last few years. Being 6ft wide, and almost that high means that not only does he have a lower centre of gravity than a Porsche 911 that someone has whipped the alloys off, but he also doubles as barn door should we ever find ourselves short of one.
http://www.steadicameurope.com/

Oculus

We're delighted to have an increasing close relationship with Oculus, one of the leading integrated marketing and graphic design consultancies in the Thames valley. Of the many things that are great about Oculus (which includes their fab building and the fact that they always have fresh milk in their fridge) probably the crucial one for us is that they spend so much time and effort truly understanding their customers needs. Not just flogging them an off the shelf (and vastly more profitable) solution. Oh, and their website is cool.
www.oculus.co.uk

Made in China

InterContinental recently sent us to Beijing. With the advent of something called jet air travel, it's the modern day equivalent of being sent to Coventry, or Siberia, or Utah. Obviously we were grateful, and in truth the hotel was great. But Beijing. Oh gosh. Not in a good way. Sadly the authorities (thanks for impounding our kit on the way in, that was special) have bulldozed anything old and interesting and replaced it with something similar to concrete bunkers - only that they are above ground with smaller windows. The local concrete factory was clearly the winner (and probably owned by a man with a stretch Merc). For us, the bright spot (aside from leaving) was that our local fixers and production support came from a great bunch of people called MIC. We liked them immediately - the first day they told us we were 'a bit short and a bit white'. That works for us and opened up some lively discussions about the colour yellow and it's relevance to the modern world. But without them, it wouldn't have happened. And for that we are grateful (and even more grateful to have reached the airport). If they had a website I would insert it here, but this being China they are probably busy copying ours and passing it off as their own.