Dr Ed Braman
Senior Lecturer in TV Production and Chair of Learning & Teaching

Profile

Biography

Ed Braman has been a television producer and director for twenty five years, specialising in current affairs and serious factual programmes. He trained in single- and multi-camera production at Thames TV (the former ITV franchise-holder in London); and his credits include network series like “This Week” (ITV),“Assignment” (BBC), “Dispatches” and “Unreported World” (C4).  He has series edited – and in some cases originated - twelve network series including the high-profile brands “Rough Justice” (BBC) and “Unreported World”.

Between 2007 and 2009, Ed was Commissioning Editor for News and Current Affairs at Channel 4 where he oversaw much of the Channel’s foreign output and several station-wide, multimedia series. Ed has worked with broadcast greats like Sir David Frost, Will Hutton, John Ware and Max Hastings; and his commissions have won Royal Television Society, One World, Rory Peck and Banff awards.

Ed lectures on: documentary production; the current state of the TV industry; screen storytelling and visual narrative. He also specialises in the practice of studio production, especially multi-camera drama and live music. 

Aside from these formal teaching commitments, Ed is happy to discuss with students how the television industry works, how to go about finding jobs, how to pitch ideas and so on. He’s also happy to share his experiences of war and famine while making films in some of the world’s most hazardous environments! 

Departmental roles

Ed is currently the Programme Leader for the BA Business of the Creative Industries.

Research

Overview

Ed completed a PhD at Birkbeck, University of London on the realisation of “The Nixon Years” in America (1968-1974) through the period’s literature, film and TV. His MA featured work on Harold Pinter as a screenwriter and adapter. Both pieces of research are scheduled for publication in the near future.

Ed is also interested in TV as a “cultural industry”: how it is financed, how programmes are commissioned, how the schedule works, how changing public tastes are reflected on screen. In particular he is interested in the ambitions (and limits) of television journalism, both long-form and short-form, and the role it plays in stimulating or supporting healthy democratic debate.

Current projects

Ed is working with colleagues Dr Lisa Peschel and Dr Gavin Kearney on an interdisciplinary project on the aesthetic and technical mediation and replication of historical performance conditions, with specific reference to the WW2 Jewish ghetto of Theresienstadt

Publications

Selected publications

Ed has published articles on the use of lightweight digital cameras and on the commissioning of foreign affairs in the industry journal Broadcast; and has written on the practice of war reporting for the magazine of the Royal United Services Institute.  His other publications take the form of the sixty plus current affairs films and documentaries he has produced since the mid 1980s.

External activities

Memberships

Ed is a former Visiting Fellow in Television Production at the Institute of Communication Studies, University of Leeds where he guest lectured and offered seminars on the business of television. In the past he has also mentored students on the postgraduate broadcast journalism course at City University and has also sat on the advisory board of the Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival. Professionally, Ed remains a working film-maker and executive producer and is associated with independent production companies in London and Oxford.