Today we met to show each other our storyboards and to decide on a narrative to follow.
Below are my quick thumbnails - very roughly timed to my transcription of the recording of David talking about the squashed frogs on Alabama highways.
After making an animatic from my thumbnails we all got together to watch the three animatics. We still couldn't decide on which to choose but eventually decided against Brenda's story because the quality of the audio recording was just not good enough - even though it was probably the best story. We drew up a list of pros and cons for mine and Rosie's stories, and eventually chose Rosie's because of the quality of the recording, and of the narration itself. Rosie has shared her storyboards with us and me and Brenda are going to look over them together and feed back any changes or tweaks we would like to see.
We thought it would be a nice idea to visit the waste water treatment plant in Knostrop, South Leeds where all the fracking waste water from the UK is sent to be processed. The idea was to get more primary research, to collect photographs and make some drawings etc. but when we got to the entrance (after a half an hour walk into the middle of nowhere) multiple signs told us trespassers would be prosecuted. We expected not to be able to snoop around the whole site, but unfortunately because it was surrounded by trees and muddy lakes visibility of the plant was incredibly limited.
Over the weekend Devi sent us a Dropbox folder with the recordings we were interested in after our chat. After we each listened to the recordings the three of us came together to identify ones which we all agreed would be nice to animate, or had a strong climate change/sustainability message. Out of the six that I really liked, Brenda and Rosie were also interested in three or four of them.
The best story that we all liked was a man talking about the experience of farmers whose land and water was being contaminated by chemicals as a result of fracking. This story was exactly what we were looking for from the start, since we started out with fracking as the area of "sustainability" that we were interested in pursuing. Unfortunately this recording was made at a music festival, and try as we might it was impossible to remove the background noise to any usable point without completely distorting the voice.
Another nice tale was from a man, now living in Australia, who was originally from Alabama. He spoke about how his neighbourhood used to get infested with toads who liked to eat the swarms of flies and crickets attracted to the electric lights. On returning home after a 15 year absence he was shocked to see no more toads - which he related to a drastic change in the climate. He also mentioned having worked for a wind-energy company, who found their plans for a farm in California scuppered by Bob Hope's wife who didn't like the look of the turbines and used their connections to have the project binned.
We have agreed that, in order to decide on a story we will each pick one, make storyboards for it, and then reconvene. We can then look at the three storyboards, and decide on which one we want to continue to develop. I picked the toads story, Rosie picked a story about an old lady whose town flooded when she was a child, and Brenda chose the fracking story discussed above. Brenda's challenge is to find some way of making the background noise seem less intrusive.
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We are taking a trip to Knostrop on Thursday, to a chemical processing plant which is used by fracking companies to dispose of their waste water. We plan on getting a few drawings and photographs, which may come in handy if we decide at some point to move our project back to a more fracking based approach. Also on Thursday we will share our storyboards with each other.
Last night we went out for a pizza with Devi and discussed her project, and the stories she has collected. She suggested that instead of her narrating a story to us she would be able to give us one of her field recordings to use. This is really great news as it means we will be animating somebody's first-hand experience of climate change related issues.
During our chat we went through Devi's field notes on each of the recordings she made, and highlighted some which sounded interesting and suitable for our project. Devi is going to send us the recordings and hopefully we will be able to find something to use as the basis of our animation.
We went to Preston New Road, near Blackpool where there is a new Fracking drill site which currently has a pretty much permanent protest camped outside its gates. We got some great photos of the signs, which we are thinking of incorporating into an animation as they are so bold and striking.
Yesterday, Rosie made it to a Frack Free Leeds meeting, and got speaking to a poet and journalist called Devi Lockwood. Devi cycled round the world collecting people's first hand stories of the impact of climate change. we are meeting with her again tonight (Tuesday 7th) to speak to her further, and hopefully to collect a story or two to animate if Devi is up for it.
This would be a really nice opportunity to make a narrative led documentary, on a an issue that is still quite removed from people's everyday lives in the UK (for the time being), but has very powerful and immediate effects for people in poorer parts of the world.
We are also continuing to look at protest camps and occupations which we might be able to visit in order to build up a body of stories, opinions and alternatives from people living in areas which will be affected by fracking.
I have teamed up with Brenda and Rosie for the applied documentary brief, and we have decided to choose sustainability as our theme and focus specifically on fracking. There are lots of infographic-y type animations out there which visualise the process of fracking, and explain the possible side effects, but few of these actually stated whether or not fracking was a good idea or not, preferring to stay neutral. For example:
As a group we all agreed that fracking is not a sustainable or worthwhile process to engage in. Not only does it have detrimental effects on the land and the lives of people living in the areas surrounding drilling sites, but the continued use of fossil fuels as an energy source is a hole we cannot dig ourselves out of.
The biggest and most obvious example of the evils of fracking is Flint, Michigan in the USA, in which fracking for shale gas has resulted in the contamination of drinking water supplies which has led to in an increase in the levels of lead and other toxic substances in the blood of schoolchildren, and a higher likelihood of a variety of cancers and birth defects. In rural communities there have been sharp increases in livestock infertility, deformed young and mortality rates.
Aside from these side effects - which are admittedly easy to ignore if you are an energy company executive living in a mansion on Bishop's Avenue, or an MP in the Westminster bubble -the introduction of shale gas into the UK energy infrastructure will increase carbon emissions by 11%, when our government has already "committed" to reducing emissions. The UK's climate Change Act of 2008 set specific targets for reduction in emissions by 2050 which will be completely unattainable if we introduce fracking into the energy industry.
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We have decided to take a slightly different tack to the video shown above. We thought that it would be interesting to try a vox-pop style documentary, in which we discussed with people their ideas for alternatives and for improving our current carbon output.
From the top of my head I think it would be interesting to talk to somebody from Leeds University physics department, who I know are currently researching improvements in the storage and release of solar energy. As well as this there are a number of anti-fracking organisations in and around Yorkshire who may have spokespeople that would like to speak to us. Rosie suggested a visit to Blackpool as there is a lot of fracking activity in that area, along with a lot of people attempting to block this action.
