I got into Charlies lesson a little late after trouble at the school (funnily enough). Long story short, my son's being bullied by three boys and after eight weeks it's got beyond a joke. Politicial correctness has gone/come so far it's like the binding and tape around everyone's mouth. As I'm typing I wish I was a great photographer, because I would have a kid covered in bruises with it's hands and mouth bound with yellow and black tape (the type they use for murder scenes) and the black writing would say political correctness. Above it the words 'the little c that killed me'. Is it going to take my son being bounced off the floor and sent to hospital or worse before a school is 'allowed' to do anything. They even offered me counselling for my son! "We can't stop the bullying, but we can offer your son counselling to deal with the symptoms of our incompetence". Anywho, moving on....
Weather has been great for filming, sunny,bright and only a little cold. We collected the equipment. Camera, dog mic, radio mic, small light to fit on camera. We decided against the heavy light as we would be dragging it around town and had planned to do interviews on the street anyway.
The first interview we went to was with Sean Nicholls, the owner of Clayhanger. A great guy, James and I met him a few months ago when we were trying to sell advertising for the Flying Post. He had given us some fairly controversial views about Princesshay and we were hoping he might repeat some of them in his interview. James contacted him and booked the interview and also put together some questions for him. I was quite nervous with this interview. For some reason I was worried it would all be over in a few minutes and we wouldn't have got the sound bites we wanted.
It was decided that all interviewers would not be seen on the DVD, so I stood to the right of the camera, but out of shot. Sean was as talkative and friendly as before and gave us a great sound bite about Princesshay being, The crown of Exeter, but Gandy Street being the Jewel'. He also brought up some interesting angles to follow up on- Council signposting to Princesshay rather than Gandy Street, refuse collection and cleaning resources being concentrated in the Princesshay area and less on Gandy Street. From the mess in the small street and ripped bags of rubbish it was easy to see he wasn't exaggerating about the refuse collection.
After the interview James stayed to get some shots. I had decided this morning to nip into a recruitment agency as I had previously rung Westward Training and Personnel who said they couldn't speak to the media and also the Job Centre who said there was a two week waiting list and all requests had to be emailed to head office. We didn't have the time to wait, so I went around to Calibre Recruitment to see if they would give us an interview. I previously worked in recruitment and Mandy Pitts one of the owners was there and remembered my name. We chatted for a bit and then I asked if she would give us an interview on the effect of recruitment in the city following the introduction of Princesshay. She was happy to come and talk. I wrote some brief questions, but mainly asked questions on the hoof. Before I went back in we set up the shot and decided to include the business name in the shot to make it more interesting. We filmed introduction pieces of myself walking into Calibre or talking with Sean Nicholls to show whilst the interview is being introduced by James on the DVD.
I chased up the Press Office for Devon County Council to see if we could interview someone from there and they said we could interview Margarette Rodgers a Councillor who would be at the Exeter City Offices on Tuesday for a meeting. We will meet her at 4:30pm on Tuesday as she has a Traffic meeting at 4:45pm. Only fifteen minutes, but I feel if we get there early and set up we can just shoot with the questions and get it all in.
For some reason it has been a long day. Even though we had appointments booked and squeezed in an extra one, I felt a bit like walking on egg shells, but I'm not entirely sure what that's about. One member of the team was very quiet and said very little to me if I spoke to them. Because of the silence I wasn't sure if they were unhappy because I now had an 'interviewer' role or if something very personal was going on? Who knows, the good thing was that at last I felt like we were actually getting there. I just wanted to squeeze in more filming so we could get a lot done while we were on a role. However, I've always been a keen person when it comes to task orientated work, I like to get it done and out of the way. Which is good, but not so much when you need to time it right and film at a point when it will fit with what else you've recorded.
o
*1 - Boom Town Rats a seventies band who's success was overshadowed by the lead singer, Bob Geldof's, charity work. In 1979, "I Don't Like Mondays", was released. This was written in response to a school shooting in California by Brenda Ann Spencer, and also reached #1 in the UK.
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