EeHH.CO.UK

Bill Clark obituary

My friend and colleague Bill Clark, who has died aged 70 of a brain haemorrhage, was a video producer and film-maker. Throughout a long career in commercials and corporate video production he shared talent, enthusiasm and generosity across the creative industries.

At heart Bill was a storyteller, drawn to fiction and to film. The cast for his first feature, The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey (2007) included a young Saoirse Ronan.

I was privileged to be a producer on his second feature, Starfish (2016), starring Joanne Froggatt and Tom Riley. Bill learned from a former colleague, Nic Ray, how her husband’s near-fatal sepsis infection had devastated their lives. Bill’s creative approach was collaborative, bold in the unblinking depiction of what an individual and a family can endure.

Born in Epsom, Surrey, Bill was the son of Glenis (nee Evans) and Leonard Clark, who owned a printing business. He attended Wallington grammar school, Sutton, then Ewell Technical College for A-levels, where, as social secretary, he booked Genesis and Led Zeppelin to play – and an enduring love of the music business was born.

In 1974, having expanded the family print business into graphics, he was introduced to Hilary Walker, who worked in promotions for EMI Records. Bill started producing marketing materials for EMI, including work on album covers for a young Kate Bush. A date at Hammersmith Odeon with a fellow EMI employee, Deborah Kirrage, led to marriage in 1979.

In 1981 Bill moved to Rutland, in the east Midlands, and founded the commercials and corporate video companies William Clark Productions then Origami. The companies thrived through the 80s and 90s, offering chances to bright young creatives on campaigns for, among others, BMW, Lancôme and Power Rangers, as well as music promotions.

The move from the commercials, which Bill always treated as 30-second feature films, was inspired by a Christmas gift to his daughter of the book The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey by Susan Wojciechowski. Bill decided this should be his first feature and set off with more determination than experience to acquire the film rights. Development of the second film followed while he continued to work in commercials.

Bill never pulled his punches and Starfish was a searing yet ultimately uplifting film. Tom Ray commented: “Society seeks to hide, ignore and disregard the experience of disability, but Starfish speaks for me and for everyone afflicted by sudden loss.” Following cinematic release, Starfish expanded awareness of sepsis around the world.

Other projects bubbled, such as a TV series in development based on his Welsh grandfather’s mining community, and Bill continued to give time and energy unstintingly to those around him.

He is survived by Debbie, their children, Edward and Celia, a grandson, Alfie, and his brother, Paul.