Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Leo Eaton's projects for PBS, The Discovery Channel, the BBC and similar clients have taken him to Mexico, Turkey and Japan; and even back in time to explore ancient Ireland and Alexander the Great.

But here and now, the English-born writer-producer-director prefers to work on his international projects by phone and Internet from the comfort of his rambling farmhouse near New Windsor -- which he shares with his wife and partner, Jeri.

"My company, Eaton Creative, is a 'virtual' company," says Eaton with a trace of British irony.

"It mainly consists of me, my accountant, my production manager and Jeri," he adds. "Our operation kind of expands and contracts ... but it mainly operates out of a wing of my house."

A short list of titles from Eaton Creative -- both completed and in-progress -- covers a wide geographic and thematic range: "In Search of Ancient Ireland," "In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great," "The Story of India" and "In Search of Shakespeare" are just a few.

Other titles include "Mariachi: The Spirit of Mexico," a piece hosted by Placido Domingo, and "Fiesta Mexicana," another music-oriented documentary hosted by Vicki Carr. Eaton wrote, directed and produced that piece.

One of his most ambitious works to date has been PBS's "America at a Crossroads," a 12-hour program studying the changing face of America's demographics and culture.

Eaton was series producer on "Crossroads," and his work earned him a 2008 Emmy Award.

He has partnered with Discovery, A&E and National Geographic -- even the Outdoor Life Network -- on projects.

His job description varies from one project to the next -- executive producer, series producer, writer-director ... or any combination.

"The joke," he says with a grin, "is that being executive producer can mean anything from being the actual hands-on producer to being the real producer's sister-in-law."

Bond and back

Eaton got his start in the British film industry in the mid-1960s as "third assistant producer" on several television shows of that era -- most notably "The Saint," a spy show starring Roger Moore in his pre-James Bond years.

By the late 1960s, he'd graduated to writing and directing episodes of long-gone shows such as "UFO," "Joe 90" and "The Secret Service."

Perhaps most notable was "Capt. Scarlet and the Mysterions," a "supermarionation" puppet show that is still a cult classic in Britain.

These days, Eaton no longer writes for puppets, but he still pulls a lot of strings as a filmmaker and producer.

The world of documentaries requires him to do everything from raising funds and vetting scripts to assembling creative teams and arranging transportation.

Nowadays he's content to let directors and producers go to China, New Delhi, Madrid, Paris and other exotic locales.

"There was a period of about six years when I was working on 'In Search of Ancient Ireland' while also doing a project on NASA," he says, "I was home about one week a month."

"And for a while I was practically commuting to Japan which, believe me, is something you don't want to do," he adds with a shrug.

"I go if it's important to be there," he says, "but otherwise I stay away, because having the executive producer on location is usually just a pain in the ... ."

'Timeline' of life

Yet those adventures around the world fuel Eaton's creative passion. A section called "Memories" on his company Web site -- www.eatoncreative.com -- includes colorful essays about his travels and his highs and lows as an artist. There's pride, nostalgia and an exhilarating sense of living an on-location nightmare in his recollections.

Many of those experiences came on challenging shoots in late 1980s as director of "Timeline," a PBS series that was, in its time, one of the most ambitious and expensive (about $1 million per hour in production costs) public programs ever made.

The show consisted of half-hour reenactments of epochal events from world history done in a format Eaton calls "history as news," or "history in the present."

It's his favorite format for recreating drama of the past. In it, a modern news team "reports" from the scene, as if they've emerged from a time machine.

The series was filmed on the Isle of Man and in Spain and Turkey.

"In Turkey we had 20 wardrobe assistants making costumes from scratch," Eaton writes. "My American production designer had to supervise teams of laborers building Byzantine fortifications in Turkey and Viking ships and plague pits on the Isle of Man ...

"Then there's language," he adds. "My Spanish producer speaks no English. My Turkish producer speaks a few words of English but better French. Nobody speaks Turkish except the Turks and my Spanish costume designer can only communicate with his Turkish assistant in Italian."

Discovering the lens

Though his British accent suggests otherwise, Eaton describes himself as a "true Cockney" who hails from working class London and was born within earshot of the bells of St. Mary-le-Bow church.

His mother was an actress, his father a diplomat who, following a mid-life religious conversion, became a celebrated Muslim author and scholar.

After his parents split, Eaton divided his time between boarding school and barnstorming English theaters with his mother.

Then he got a cheap movie camera for his 16th birthday, and his world changed.

"I started making films and I never wanted to do anything else," he says.

Over the next couple decades, Eaton balanced stints in London's film industry with a stab or two at writing "the Great British novel."

He met his Texas-born wife, Jeri, during three years as a writer in the sleepy Mexican town of San Miguel in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

When the money ran out, the couple moved to Austin, Texas, where Jeri resumed her studies at the University of Texas and Leo got a job teaching script writing and film. From there they relocated to London, then to the Greek Isle of Crete, where they lived for three years in the late 1970s.

They returned to Texas, where Eaton managed public television stations in Austin and San Antonio.

That's what led the couple to Carroll County -- a six-year stint as senior vice president of national and international programming at Maryland Public Television brought the Eatons here in the late 1980s.

In 1997, he launched Eaton Creative and hung out his shingle as an independent documentary filmmaker.

Heart of the matter

Though he's not the world traveler he once was, Eaton is anything but a homebody.

He's a long-time producer of popular BBC/PBS travel-history documentaries narrated by host Michael Woods. One nearly-completed program, "The Story of India" has been three years in he making.

"Though I don't go on location for those projects, Michael and his director and I all work very closely together," Eaton says. "I can do a lot from home, but nothing beats sitting with the editor in the cutting room in London and saying, 'What about this?' or 'What about that?'

"'The Story of India' has required about a dozen trips to London," he says.

But Eaton has also embraced his adopted community by working on the "Carroll County History Project." (See sidebar.)

He was approached for the project by the Community Media Center and found the aspect of telling the county's story through oral histories irresistible. After all, that's been at the root of his whole career, from Istanbul to New Windsor.

"To me, film making is really all about telling stories," Eaton says. "Don't worry or think of it as making films -- just keep it simple.

"Just think of it as getting people to tell their stories, to share their stories," he says. "That's what's always at the heart of it."

user comments (0)