Hot Shots 2025: Chris Hailes and Horia Dragoi

A rare Hot Shots double act, Chris Hailes and Horia Dragoi met on a free film-making course in the north-east and both went on to study film and TV production at the University of Greenwich, where they won an RTS Award for short-film production.

They then co-founded Brighton-based post house Ponder Create (originally Vesio) to make the most of their skillsets: Chris is director, edit producer and editor, while Horia is a lighting cameraman, animator and head of post.

Sharing offices with Bowled Over Media, they are also e ectively part of the indie’s production team and designed a unique post-production system to deliver high-volume Broadcast Award-nominated Channel 4 series Narrow Escapes.

Designed to allow for online edit producing, remote editing and other cost and time e ciencies, the system has been picked up as a model for other indies supplying to C4.

“None of us had made a 20-part series before, but they calmly planned, scheduled and budgeted and made everything work so smoothly,” says Bowled Over creative director Heidi Gomes.

She describes the duo as “geniuses in their own fields”. Together, she says, they represent the future of television.

“Full of ideas that embrace new technology, and with time and cost-efficiencies as priorities, while respecting traditional storytelling methods, they are our partners in crime in all production and we love working together.”