Friday 14 August 2009

Show & Tell (2007)...

This was another chance to work with the Rural Media Company in Hereford, this time on a government sponsored research project (mediated through Bristol University School of Policy Studies) into rural poverty. It covered the following topics:

Necessities of Life, Isolation and Powerlessness, Accessing Services and Opportunities, Denial of Rights, Aspirations and Opinions.


The project involved solo teams getting video diary footage from those who took part – at this point the footage was handed over to me, acting as footage loader & logger. I was, put simply, responsible for getting all the footage (hours upon hours of it – there were around 50 tapes if memory serves) loaded onto the editing system, while simultaneously logging the content (what’s being said, quality of footage, overall score etc).

For my part of the job at least, it was a good lesson in patience and endurance. It’s really surprising how worn out you can get loading and logging footage, seriously.

Even though I was doing a fairly process-based job, it did allow me to see a hell of a lot of response to the issue of rural poverty from those affected by it - from their mouth, to my ears - every single tape, uncut. It really shows you what some people have to get by on, and how they struggle, and most importantly of all, how it affects them personally.

Via the Guardian link below, you can view a trailer of the project, or alternatively via the Rural Media link where you can watch a fuller version.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/video/2009/jan/07/show-tell-rural-poverty

http://www.ruralmedia.co.uk/index.php?nav_id_sent=3&page_id_sent=35

http://www.ruralmedia.co.uk/video-player/FlvVideo.php?video=636670039Show%20and%20Tell.flv

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