Barnardo's

I’ve really enjoyed the opportunities in Work Related Learning this year, from taking part in Lucy Webb’s graduation horror film, The Candidate (TBA), to directing several videos for Barnardo’s and HMP Edinburgh.

The Candidate

I first joined The Candidate in January. Harris Palmer, my friend and frequent collaborator, was producing the film for writer/director Lucy Webb and he asked me to come on board as a production assistant. I wasn’t immediately sure what this meant, but I agreed knowing that whatever it was, I was bound to learn from it.

In the end, I organised the fundraising campaign for the film. We estimated the film needed a budget of £1500. I was in charge of raising this money. Having no previous experience crowdfunding, I researched how other films achieved this, for example The Grief That Stole Christmas (TBA).

I decided to create a social media presence for the film, so I created a Facebook and an Instagram page for the film. I designed various posters (for example Fig 1 and Fig 2) so people got a taste of what the film was, without giving too much away. I set up an Indiegogo campaign so people could donate online. In order to encourage donations, I created various perks you could select depending on the value of your donation, for example a raffle entry with a variety of prizes. The highest-level perk was an executive producer credit, and several people actually went for this!

I regularly updated social media with ‘Meet the Crew’ posts where crew members shared a little about themselves; that way people knew who their money was going to. On reflection, a greater variety of posts might have been more effective, for example teasing the film’s production design. However, for a film this small most of the contributors are friends and family anyway. I really appreciated everyone who helped us out though.

I learned a lot about crowdfunding and managing a social media presence on Lucy’s film, and I’m sure I can carry that across to my own work in the future.

Barnardo’s and HMP Edinburgh

In one of our very first classes, David Lumsden ran through lots of work experience opportunities set up for us. I think shadowing a member of production can be a valuable experience, but I had previous experience of this and wanted to try something different.

There was one that caught my eye though. Barnardo’s wanted a short video showing their

facilities at HMP Edinburgh for relatives visiting inmates. I was worried I would struggle to deal with such big clients, but the opportunity offered hands-on directing experience, so I was sure I would learn a lot from it and I’d have something great for my CV; not to mention it would actually have a real-world benefit to others.

I researched the prison facilities finding that Barnardo’s run a separate building in which relatives of inmates can wait and relax until they are called through into the main prison itself. There wasn’t much other information available, but I did find another, similar video from Grampian prison, so I had a pretty good idea of what was desired.

I immediately started my application; a CV and cover letter were required. My preexisting CV wasn’t media focused, so I wrote a new one from scratch. I knew what Barnardo’s were looking for, so I kept that in mind. I actually had previous experience working with prison inmates at a festival I helped set up, and I knew this was valuable experience, so I highlighted this in my cover letter.

After applying, I received an email offering me the position. I decided the first thing to do was find a producer so I could focus on directing without being bogged down in securing permissions and technicalities required to shoot in the prison. I got Ruth Aitken involved. She produced my previous short film, Hostages1 (2019) and was set to produce my next short Radio Underground before it was shelved due to Covid 19.

On 05/02/2020, Ruth and I went to the prison to meet and discuss the video with Shona Pate, who wasn’t familiar with filmmaking. The video was exactly what I had anticipated from my research; she wanted a basic tour of the facilities. Disappointingly, there wasn’t much room for something more creative, but first and foremost the video had a specific purpose to fulfil.

Grampian’s video used a ‘question and answer’ technique, however I found it quite condescending, so I wanted something a little different. The video had to be child appropriate. With animator Harris Redpath, we discussed the possibility of incorporating an animated character as a tour guide, using an art style like Asterix the Gaul2 (See Fig 3). However, the character distracted from the video’s point, so I opted for something simpler.

Having no experience in commercial filmmaking, I wasn’t sure how to approach the project, so I approached it like I would for any film. I wrote a screenplay/structure. The video would follow an audience surrogate checking in and going through security. It wasn’t as fun as animation, but it would be more effective to actually see someone going through the processes.

Ruth and I put out casting calls for the project on various Facebook groups. We only got a few responses, but that’s the difficulty with no-budget filmmaking; people don’t like working for free. We got the responders to send us a recording of the monologue I had written. Although we didn’t have a huge selection to choose from, one response I liked was Jodie Alma so we offered her the role.

The crew was largely made up of people I had previously collaborated with. Andrew Harman and Juliet Brown previously worked on Hostages, and they agreed to edit and do sound respectively. Otto Urban agreed to do location sound, however unfortunately the virus prevented this. Thankfully, Anthony Marshall stepped up and took his place. Finally, Aaron Ross came on board as cinematographer. Aaron DP’d a film (see Fig 4) I wrote called The Man Who Ran Away (2019), but we’d never worked as director-cinematographer. However, together we wrote an unproduced TV pilot and mini-series outline, called Gallows, so collaborating was second nature for us already.

HMP Edinburgh themselves got in touch with us. Apparently, they liked our direction and wanted us to make a second video; this time a family induction tour of the facilities within the main prison itself. I already had an ever-increasing workload from my other film projects, but I agreed because it was another great opportunity.

For the induction video Steffan Kirkpatrick would DP, but the rest of the crew was the same. I hadn’t worked directly with Steffan before, but around this time, we did a visual exercise scene recreation (see Fig 5) together for the film Memento4 (2000). However, I’d seen his previous work and I knew he had experience in making this kind of commercial video before.

On 04/03/2020 we were invited down to HMP Edinburgh for our recce and test shoot. I wanted the entire crew to attend so they were familiar with the prison before the shoot itself. Unfortunately, Steffan couldn’t make it for personal reasons. However, while Shona had sought approval for us to enter the prison, nobody in appropriate authority had filled the forms allowing us to be there. We were allowed into the visitors centre through security to the visiting room itself. This was all we needed to see for the first video and I was able to take lots of photographs to help plan the shoot (for example, see Fig 6 and Fig 7). However, we couldn’t view the locations for the induction video, which we still hadn’t been given a proper brief for. Several times, we asked for more information about the induction video, but with no reply.

I wrote up a shot list for the first video with Aaron, however I couldn’t really plan the induction video without further information from the prison. We would have to take a ‘scattergun’ approach; we would shoot as much as possible and write the video later. Then, the prison dropped the bombshell that we would only have several hours to shoot both videos. Obviously it’s a prison, so I never expected to be given free run of the place, but I definitely would have wanted longer to make sure the material was to a high standard. The client didn’t understand the filmmaking process and so didn’t realise that this was a bit unreasonable, but we pushed through and complied with their requests.

On 15/03/2020, we arrived at the prison for the shoot. This was just as the virus was hitting the UK, so while we were careful about washing our hands etc, we weren’t too worried. However, a couple of days later and we wouldn’t have been allowed to shoot at all.

Jodie arrived soon after us and we were able to get started. Apparently in her spare time she writes detective novels, so she was interested in the project because it granted her an opportunity to see inside the prison as inspiration for her novels. However, unfortunately she never really seemed to relax and the speed with which we had to shoot meant I couldn’t take the time to develop her performance further. I’m not really happy with the performance in the end, because I feel her nervousness comes across too strongly, especially towards the end when her character is meant to be more relaxed (see Fig 8). They say all experience is good experience, and while I wasn’t satisfied with the final performance, I’ve definitely learned something from every actor I’ve worked with, and Jodie was no exception.

It wasn’t until the day of the shoot that we were finally briefed on the induction video. However, they weren’t able to grant us access to every location they wanted us to feature in the film. For example, the religious centre and the library were things they wanted us to show, but we weren’t actually allowed into them. In place of religious centre footage, we reused a shot from the first video (see Fig 9) and for the library, we had to use footage shot through a window (see Fig 10). Other than these major issues, the rest of the shoot was relatively uneventful.

We shot mostly handheld, because we didn’t have time to continually set up a tripod, and anyway, they really weren’t happy about us bringing the tripod into the prison. We did, however, come up with some creative shots. Coming from a DIY filmmaking background, I’ve made my own makeshift sliders in the past, so I applied some of that filmmaking experience I had growing up making films on my own as a kid. Aaron and I held the camera down on one a small plastic children’s chair they had in the visitor’s centre. We dragged the chair, creating a smooth, dolly motion. A bit of digital stabilization later and we had created an effective slider shot.

A young boy named Tom was hanging around the visitor’s centre. He was there to visit his dad who was in prison. However, he was crying because he just wanted to see where his dad was staying, but obviously wasn’t allowed. We brought the camera over to him and showed him some of the footage we had shot of the inside of the prison. He calmed down, because he was finally getting to see where his dad was. He told us about how his dad goes to the gym every single day, and we were able to show him footage of the gym (see Fig 11). As flawed as the video we were making was, it was encouraging to be reminded that it had a practical purpose, and just even seeing Tom brighten up after seeing the footage showed us that our effort was definitely worthwhile.

Unfortunately, due to the virus, self-isolation was starting after the shoot. We had booked out an audio suite at Screen Academy, but we weren’t allowed to use it. However, fortunately Jodie had done voice over work in the past and she owned her own microphone, so we conducted the recording session remotely. The quality of her microphone wasn’t as good as Screen Academy’s, but it did the job. In the grand scheme of things, we were lucky to be able to record anything at all. Jodie did a solid job. She had a tendency to add strange emphasis on certain words, which wasn’t ideal, but we got there in the end and I think the voice over turned out ok.

Andrew quickly got started on the edit. In order to maintain his self-isolation, he edited the film on his laptop in Premier, and soon we had first cuts of both videos. The first video turned out ok. It’s not going to win any awards, but it did its job. It was certainly rough around the edges, but this was the first time I had ever made a video of this type and I think it turned out ok. It’s difficult to know if other people see the same flaws I do, because I’m close to it. We had to use corporate music, which wasn’t the most interesting choice in the world, but that was the vibe the client wanted.

The second video, however, was much rougher. Where in the first video we had been able to carefully construct our shots with the edit in mind, the induction video was more random. During the shoot, we didn’t know exactly what footage would be important. There were whole sections where we didn’t even have any footage at all, given our lack of access, so it was a difficult exercise in patching something together that made as much sense as possible. This included, for example, taking shots of bookcases from the first video reusing them in the library section of the induction video (See Fig 12).

One of the restrictions from the prison was that we weren’t allowed to show any of the locks or keys, for security reasons. Mostly we took care of this in the shoot itself, by just being careful about what was in frame, however there was the rare lock that made it into shot and we made sure to edit around it.

We sent the rough cuts off to the clients for feedback. Shona told us that there was one line she wanted us to re-record with slightly different wording, and other than this she was happy. However, the footage needed to be sent to security as well, to make sure we hadn’t breached any of their rules about filming in the prison. This took a long time. We couldn’t go on to the next stage until the videos we had produced were given the all clear, so we were stuck in limbo for weeks.

Eventually, we got the all clear, so we finished tidying up the edits and passed them on to sound and colour. Unfortunately, at the time of writing this, the videos aren’t completely finished, so haven’t yet been released, but I’m happy enough with how they turned out. They definitely show the signs of their production issues, but I think they do their jobs effectively. I definitely would have wanted to make something with a bit more flare and more of a sense of fun, but I found that at the end of the day, the client needs to get what they want. The videos had a very practical purpose and I do think they achieved this purpose.

I feel that there were times I was perhaps at risk of overloading myself with work, because I was in pre-production on several short films I was set to write and direct at the time, and then I took on the second video for the prison. Fortunately I think I was just about able to balance my time ok, but it was certainly a struggle. I definitely think I learned a lot about time management from working on these videos.

These films were a difficult experience, because not only was it the first time I’d ever done anything like it, but the security restrictions made it naturally a very difficult project already. I was able to carry a lot of the skills and methods across from making short films over the years, however things definitely didn’t go completely to plan, particularly with the second video where we had to shoot first and write it later. I’m not completely happy with the videos in the end, because I think given more time and space to work, we could have pulled off something more interesting. However, considering it was voluntary work, I think we did a pretty good job. I learned a lot about working with a client; something that was new to me. I kept wanting to do something more creative with it, but at the end of the day I had to remember that while I was directing, it wasn’t for me and the client’s opinion was really what mattered most at the end of the day.

I did enjoy my first experience of commercial filmmaking. Feature filmmaking is definitely always going to be my end goal, but more commercial stuff like this seems like a good sandbox to play in as a starting point. It has allowed me to sharpen the basics of my film craft. It’s not necessarily the most creatively rewarding work for someone like me, but I learned a lot from my experience that I will definitely carry forward with me. There is a different discipline involved, particularly in working with a client, but there are definitely transferrable skills.

Conclusion

I’m looking forward to what’s next. I hadn’t ever really considered commercial filmmaking as an option for me in the past, because I didn’t really know how to go about getting involved. I think that it’s key to put yourself out there and get stuck in with whatever is thrown at you. Barnardo’s and the prison seem happy with the work I’ve produced and I think the second video they requested from me is a testament to this. They also got back in touch with me recently and asked me to help them set up a system for relatives of inmates to send in video recordings of themselves to give to the prisoners, since visitation is no longer going ahead while everywhere is still on lockdown. I found their positivity about my work very encouraging and I would definitely consider getting involved in similar projects in the future.