The Muckle Hens

Shona Donaldson

Shona was born in Malaysia and has always wanted to explore the world. She had explored a great deal of it by the time she was seventeen, having subsequently lived in Ecuador, Nigeria, Kenya, Indonesia, and the swampland jungle of Irian Jaya, where her father worked as a geographer.

She returned to Edinburgh when she was eighteen and began working as an actress in rep theatres around Scotland mostly, but also memorably performing in the off-Broadway musical ‘Up To Your Oxters’. After that she moved into radio, working as both presenter and producer, before becoming involved with Cromwell Films. She worked with Cromwell Films for five years, a stint that included line producing their first two feature films and producing the award winning film ‘Macbeth’ starring Helen Baxendale and Jason Connery.

Shona left Cromwell to head up production at Waterside Television, a role that not only had her managing a large production team, but also allowed her to inject some of the dramatic creativity she had brought with her from Film and Radio. She was then selected as one of three producers to work on Channel 4’s ‘Holy Grail’ initiative, working with Wark Clements to develop returnable dramas. It was this experience that inspired her to set up Muckle Hen, which she did in 2003.

As a producer she has worked on a huge range of projects, from feature films to radio shows, animation projects, TV Commercials and Corporate Films. She has produced work all over the world for a host of clients including Rexam, The Scottish Executive, Standard Life, Glenmorangie, RBS, Silverburn, HBOS, IKEA and Northlink Ferries and in places as far flung and exotic as Las Vegas, Vienna, Helsinki and Dunbar.

Andrew Macintosh

Andrew was born in Inverness, and brought up in Edinburgh. After a law degree at Bristol University, he went to Drama School in Glasgow and worked for nearly seven years as an actor. He worked in rep theatre across the UK and in TV, where he spent much of his time playing - surprisingly – lawyers and policemen. It was during periods of ‘resting’ that he began to write; firstly writing an episode for ‘P’ Division, the Radio 4 Police Drama Series on which he played a regular character.

This led to him moving behind the camera and as well as writing a series of short films and corporate scripts, he worked for four years as a production co-ordinator and assistant director at MTP in Glasgow. Moving to London, he began working as a director. His first big job was creating a series of films for Deutsche Bank in support of their graduate Recruitment Programme, a job that involved shooting in five countries over seven weeks. After that he spent two years working for the Men’s’ Tennis Tour making a series of film profiles of the world’s leading tennis players, and earning a reputation among broadcasters as an incisive, clear-headed interviewer.

After the ATP, Andrew continued working in London as a director on a series of films for clients such as BP, BT, Rexam and DEFRA. He also returned to writing and worked on ITV’s ‘Night and Day’ as a scriptwriter.

He returned to Scotland to join Muckle Hen and has written and directed TV and Radio Commercial Campaigns for Northlink Ferries and Silverburn, and directed films for IKEA, RBS, HBOS, Scottish Widows, NHS Health Scotland, Macdonald Hotels, RNLI, Intense, Glenmorangie and Scottish Water. He has script-edited and will co-produce Muckle Hen’s first feature film ‘Family Planning’.

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