DVD Cover for Still Life
Please scroll down for more background information about this project.
Article from The Guardian on Still Life:
http://guardian.co.uk/society/2002/aug/07/guardiansocietysupplement5/print
Listing on the BFI website:
http://explore.bfi.org.uk/4ce2b8886e837
Still Life - part 1 of 5 from Still Life on Vimeo.
Still Life - part 2 of 5 from Still Life on Vimeo.
Still Life - part 3 of 5 from Still Life on Vimeo.
Still Life - part 4 of 5 from Still Life on Vimeo.
Still Life - part 5 of 5 from Still Life on Vimeo.
I was always curious about seeing what a prison was like on the inside, but I had no intention of visiting one through the normal route, so this project gave me the perfect opportunity, and more importantly, let me leave at the end of the day.
This was 1 of 2 projects that I made at HMP Wayland and was the first video project in British prison history to be totally left in the hands of the inmates.
A group of inmates (who went under the name of Rags 2 Riches) wanted to make a drugs awareness video aimed at young people to inform them about the dangers of drug and substance abuse.
Initially Rags 2 Riches wanted to include, amongst other things, a fictional story of a drug dealer who was living the high life and then got caught and also show some cartoons of dragons being chased.
However I wasn't really feeling this approach and I felt that laying out their life stories would be far more effective than mythical cartoon creations.
I interviewed 4 members of Rags 2 Riches and gathered together over 10 hours of footage and then whittled it down to just under 40 minutes.
As well as filming new footage for cutaway scenes, I also used footage from my own personal archives that I'd filmed over the years or footage from other old projects - all recycled to fit the project at hand.
Filming at a prison threw up a lot of different obstacles that you'd never think of until you were actually in the situation.
E.G:
Security wouldn't even let me take my camera in until 2-3 weeks into the project.
Somedays, after travelling for about an hour, we'd turn up only to be told that we couldn't go in as there was a prison-wide lockdown (i.e - all inmates weren't allowed out of their cells) and we simply had to turn around and go back home.
Having to edit out really interesting footage that could portray the prison in a bad light or potentially compromise prison security or simply because it was unsuitable for the intended audience or that it was not that relevant to the nature of the documentary.
In the end, the only thing that I wasn't fully happy with was the semi cheesy happy ending that was imposed on me.
I haven't spoken to any of the 4 lads in the film since but I've got a extremely strong feeling that most of them have started using again. (I've since found out that one of them came back inside but I didn't know exactly what for).
I originally wanted the happy ending to play out and then tag on some text or voiceover that explained their fate, providing the audience with a gut punch at the end - just to show that things don't always end up nice and happy.
However the facilitator felt that this ending wouldn't offer any hope to the young audience. Whereas I felt it was simply being honest with them.
Inspite of this, Still Life still remains one of my projects that I'm most proud of.
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