Featured Projects

Smelling the diagnosis

Sniffer dogs are often seen in airports, but Cliff, the beagle from Amsterdam, is more at home in a hospital. Cliff has been trained to sniff out the bacteria clostridium difficile, which is highly infectious and can cause outbreaks of diarrhoea on the ward. Scientists at the VU University Medical Centre in Amsterdam studied how effective Cliff was, and found that he can sniff out Clostridium difficile infections in stool samples and even in the air surrounding patients in hospital [...]

Read more »
Fit to Fly? from Martin Freeth on Vimeo.

Fit to Fly? (Medical Justice)

This film supports the campaigning work of the charity Medical Justice. All too often asylum seekers and refugees are locked up without proper medical care or diagnosis.

Read more »
Fatal Alchemy from Martin Freeth on Vimeo.

Fatal Alchemy

Miracle beauty products may be a staple Christmas present today, but they’re not a recent invention. Diane de Poitiers, a French noble woman and mistress of Henry II of France, tried to use gold to preserve her looks – in alchemical law, gold was immutable, and alchemists and apothecaries created various potions to pass this gift onto their customers. For Christmas, the BMJ has made a film about a French research team’s investigations of Diane’s remains, and its discovery that [...]

Read more »
StickyTape X-rays from Martin Freeth on Vimeo.

Sticky tape X-rays

New research provides evidence for an observation first described over 50 years ago – that peeling sticky tape emits x-rays. Hear the authors discuss their work and see the phenomenon in action.

Read more »
Maisie & George Trailer from Martin Freeth on Vimeo.

Maisie & George, and the future of their planet (trailer)

The NHS is one of Britain’s largest contributors to our carbon footprint. This film is about the impact of climate change on babies born today, and how the NHS can reduce its carbon footprint.

Read more »
The Antikythera story

New interpretations of the Antikythera Mechanism reveal that it could be used to predict eclipses, and that it had a dial recording the dates of the ancient Olympiads. The 2,000-year-old box of intricate gearwork provides a glimpse of the engineering prowess of the Hellenic world. The team discuss their results here.

Read more »
The quantum lattice, with Bill Phillips

Awarded a Nobel Prize for using lasers to control and cool atoms, producing the Bose-Einstein condensation, Bill Phillips is eager to hear about new theories from young scientists like Hannah Venzl. An exciting dialogue develops between them on a boat trip on Lake Constance as they dream up new collaborative experiments in the quantum world.

Read more »
The harms of overtreatment

Overly aggressive treatment is estimated to cause 30 000 deaths among Medicare recipients alone each year. Overall, unnecessary interventions are estimated to account for 10-30% of spending on healthcare in the US, or $250bn-800bn (£154bn-490bn; €190bn-610bn) annually. This video features Shannon Brownlee, acting director of the New America Health Policy Program and author of Overtreated: How Too Much Medicine is Making Us Sicker and Poorer, David Himmelstein, professor at the City University of New York School of Public Health, and Vikas [...]

Read more »
Beethoven’s deafness and his three styles

That Beethoven suffered from deafness is well known, but how did the progression of the condition affect his composition? In this video the Isolo string quartet demonstrate how his style changed over time. Read about the science behind the video in the paper, Beethoven’s deafness and his three styles, http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d7589.

Read more »
THE WOMAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, Alice Stewart

Alice Stewart was one of Britain’s foremost epidemiologists. However her recognition came late in her career, having spent her life fighting the establishment’s enshrined views. In the 1950s when she started her work, x-rays were routinely used in foetal monitoring. It was Stewart who first showed the link between the practice and childhood leukemia. She went on to look at the effects of low-level radiation exposure – uncovering the true adverse effects of chronic exposure, and thus earning herself the [...]

Read more »
Shit Matters

Community led total sanitation may not sound like the most cutting edge medical science, but the potential impact of this initiative is huge. Contact with faeces spreads human disease, and this technique helps villagers around the world understand how the practice of open defecation means that they’re, literally, in the shit.

Read more »
The Living Map of La Bastide

To experience a French village in an entirely new way, go to : www.labastidevivante.fr

Read more »

Welcome to mfreeth.com

mfreeth.com is Martin Freeth’s own company.

With over 40 years experience in media, Martin draws on his wealth of knowledge to provide three services:

Creative multimedia and TV project development and production – with special focus on science, technology and medicine.
Strategic consultancy in broadband content, online education, interactive learning software and science communication.
Lively lecturing, tutoring and mentoring.

Explore this site to view a selection of recent projects or get in touch to discuss new commissions.

Recent Films

The Spirit of McCord

The McCord Hospital in Durban, South Africa, is an optimistic and inspiring place where where HIV has been effectively treated, against the odds. The team is driven by faith – but all faiths and none are welcome.

Continue reading »
The Road to Mafélé

Before the current troubles in Mali, a unique charity called Jeunesse et Dévéloppment, supported by the Mali Development Group in the UK, was organising a range of community-scale development projects in the south of the country. This 30 minute film explores educational, medical and agricultural initiatives on a journey to remote Mafélé.

Continue reading »
Engraved on my heart: a new garden for Calais

Caroline Holmes is a garden-designer and garden historian. She explains her exciting commission to create a completely new traditional garden all around the Church of Notres Dames de Calais.

Continue reading »
What Olympic legacy?

London’s bid to host the Olympic Games in 2012 was won with a promise to increase public participation in sport. Denis Campbell, health correspondent for The Guardian, looks at the evidence, which suggests that the reality of the situation will not live up to the hype – and that the UK government’s cuts in other areas are actively discouraging children from taking part in school sports.

Continue reading »
Breaking the Cycle (Addaction)

We have made several films for Addaction featuring service users and presented by the Chief Executive Simon Antrobus.

Continue reading »
Ancient Tsunamis

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was not the first of its kind, according to research in Nature. Two groups of scientists have found sedimentary evidence for possible predecessors to the 2004 event in Thailand and Sumatra. They discuss their findings here.

Continue reading »
A piece of the monkey puzzle (Arabic version)

The discovery of the fossilized remains of a previously unknown primate from Saudi Arabia could bring us one step closer to dating the divergence between hominoids and Old World monkeys. This version is in Arabic.

Continue reading »
The Alexander Technique

How does the Alexander Technique work? What are the authors findings about the clinical and cost effectiveness of the treatment? This was one of our most popular films of those we made for the BMJ.

Continue reading »
Trailer, Nobel Reactions

Every summer an extraordinary meeting between Nobel Laureates and young scientists takes place on Lindau Island in Germany. In 2009 it was the turn of the chemists and we were there to capture moments of this unique meeting of minds on film. Nature Video presents five short films on chemistry plus a special film feature on climate change.

Continue reading »
Nicotine, smoking and genetics

Some of the strongest evidence that lung cancer risk variants are common in the general population appears in Nature and Nature Genetics, although the three papers differ on whether the association is direct or mediated through nicotine dependence. Watch the research being discussed here.

Continue reading »