Making Ugly is an Independent Feature film from the northern film company Squarebox Yellow, filmed across Edinburgh and London.

I acted as Director of Photography on this feature film for the London Unit. Shooting on the Sony EX3 we filmed in and around some of East London’s most atmospheric locations.

http://makingugly.com/

Making Ugly is due for release in 2011.

Using the EX3 handheld it gave a great grittiness to the feel of the film.

The Hypnotist is a film that I was asked to shoot in the early stages of my cinematography career for writer/director John Crewe. It was shot on the Sony Z1 and extensively uses Glidecam for shots running through the forest.

The film has since been doing the festival circuits.

Saathi are one of The Railway Children’s partners in Mumbai. They provide day and night shelters for street children. One of their initiatives, that Railway Children funds, is a scheme to get children to leave their life on the streets and return back home. media4charity was asked to make a video that aided in a pitch to raise funds from a large sponsor to support this scheme

The films production:

Initially this film was scripted and was to be based around the first boy that appears in the video. However, while filming I learnt that a family was coming to pick up their son. I had to then make the decision to switch the film around and focus more on this boy.

Here is the story of that boy:

At the age of 12 his father died and he was pulled out of education so that he could earn money for the family. He could not handle this responsibility and ran away to Mumbai. Here he begged at the station and was picked up by an orphanage.

At the orphanage he was sexually abused by older children and ran away again to the station. At the age of 14 Saathi finally got involved with his case. After much effort and building up of trust he told Saathi his story and where he was from, he did not want to return home because of the shame he would face.

Saathi then became the middle person, coaxing him that being with his family was the best thing for him, he then agreed to return home and Saathi made contact with his family. What you see in the film is his mother, sister, uncle and grandfather coming to pick him up.

When he returns home Saathi will monitor his situation and ensure that he returns back into education. A happy ending to this story, but without the help of this scheme, many young children end up living on the streets and endure a life of malnutrition, poverty and abuse. Without proper guidance they are venerable and many become the victims of sexual abuse and resort drugs, glue sniffing and alcohol to hide their pain.

This is why early intervention from organisations like The Railway Children and Saathi is so important.

EHSAAS is the Railway Children’s training program. It comprises of 4 modules that aids a street child in their awareness of themselves and their surroundings. The program helps them understand traumatic experiences and brings about awareness of abuse. media4charity was asked to amake a film that promoted this program.

The films production:

The brief for this film instantly presented a minefield of filming problems. It had to show both the trainers and the children undertaking module 4 of the program and had to present them both before and after. Because of the nature of the modules, much of it was repetitive: colouring, drama, meditation etc. and to make matters worse it was all in Hindi. It took 8 days of patiently waiting and filming key moments, 2 days to design a paper edit and then a further 5 days to edit. In the end interviews were cut out in favour of using a voice-over.

The film is going to be used to encourage more of Railway Children’s partners to use the program and raise funds to develop it for distribution to agencies around the world. It is hoped that every child that undertakes the program will be in a stronger position to face their own trauma and protect themselves from abuse; whether this be mental, physical and sexual or drug abuse.

I was asked to help film and edit, through Media4charity, a film for the FilmWorks Trust about Westminster Council’s Ward budget innitiatives.

The film was quite dry in its content, so it was decided to use outtakes within the film itself to make it more human and build the character of the children who were doing much of the interviewing and filmwork.

The film has since been used to promote the FilmWorks Trust and gain funding for other films that that the children of Westminster are involved with.