A Monthly Publication

1  The Journey of a Lifetime

“It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive” - so reads the inscription on a magnificent sundial on the wall of a house at the lower end of Austin Street, the former home of  H. G. Ibberson  ARIBA - one of the chief architects of our town.  This is Ibberson’s own  adaptation of the lines by Robert Louis Stevenson  - “to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.”  The point is that the journey itself is of major significance. Like the tourist who has been everywhere and seen nothing, so many people miss the amazing things around them - both pleasurable and  challenging - because of their fixation with ‘destinations’ which also blinkers their view of a larger picture and how they might respond to what they will encounter on the way.

The downside of our ‘instant access’ society is that it tends to instant ‘severance’, with no real interest in and even less commitment to what has been ‘accessed’.

The dictionary defines a Wayfarer as a traveller - on foot.  A bird’s eye view helps getting things into perspective - but it’s not enough. The true wayfarer is an observer as well as a traveller, reflecting upon and learning lessons from what they observe at ground level on that journey.

Over 13 years ago I produced the film “ Hunstanton, History on a Postcard ”  to celebrate the 150th Anniversary of the beginnings of our town.  Producing it was a journey all of its own for me ( even though I had grown up here, starting school at James Street in 1945 )  and in the process learning a great deal - and not just about the history of the town !

Operating as “Wayfarer Films”, I have been producing documentary films of all sorts for the past 20 years, primarily for various Christian Mission Agencies. It began  in 1972  when  I joined the Volunteer Home Staff of one such Agency operating in South America with which many friends of mine were working.  My work involved organising and producing Audio-Visual materials ( tape recordings and slide-sets - a forerunner of PowerPoint ) for use by churches and groups around the country. Eventually this led to personally launching into the uncharted waters of video production, by which time it was definitely more than a hobby.

Wayfarer in the High Andes of Bolivia

So, what does film-making involve?    To begin with, carrying a camera is fraught with dangers, and not just physical ones: -

- the risk of insensitive detachment, curiosity and even voyeurism  - the offensive ‘camera-in-the-face of starving children’ style of photojournalism ;

- the risk of pursuing one’s own agenda and failing to grasp the real issues; such as - “Apart from the shooting incident, what did you think of the play, Mrs Lincoln?”  - the potential for the arrogance and phoney authority of the camera - making out you are showing it as it is ;

- selectivity on the part of the cameraman ( the field of vision of any camera is only a fraction of the human eye ) so easily degenerating into a mad supermarket-trolley dash of grabbing a few items and then thinking we have captured a  properly representative sample of the whole picture ;

- recognizing the great maxim that “position affects perspective”.  Our own standpoint will significantly affect how objectively we see what we see - or rather the subjectivity with which we see anything ;

- the agenda , but whose, and how biased ? During a specialist training session at the Rank Studios in Bushey, I heard of  a WVS Manageress who refused to be filmed in the WVS Clothes Store, as the whole ‘piece’ would so easily become a cliché to undermine the seriousness of anything she wanted to say about her work ;  also the cameraman with his own agenda who sought out the only bit of barbed wire on the site of an Open Prison as a backdrop to interview the Governor. The real danger in this is the old newspaperman’s maxim - “never let the facts get in the way of a good story.”

Wayfarer in the studio

But it doesn’t end there.  The editing and packaging of all the material is the most demanding and therefore the most risky part of the entire process.

Usually, many hours of film have to be evaluated, logged, selected and prioritised - and much discarded - then either the script prepared from the material selected, or the material selected to support the script.

Of course a script is necessary, and in filming a documentary it is essential to draft a solid shooting-script upon which to plan the whole venture - BUT, honesty and integrity demand that the final script may need to be totally rewritten as more facts come to light during filming.

That’s enough for starters. I purposely haven’t touched on any of the complex technical issues involved in documentary film production - interesting though they may be - but felt it important to highlight some of the real dangers involved in this absorbing and very serious enterprise. However, be warned. You cannot remain unaffected by what you learn on  such a journey.

I am reminded of the story of an old Indian from the high mountains of Peru who was brought down to the coast and saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time in his life. The experience literally ‘blew him away’.  Later, he was seen wading into the surf clutching a jar. When asked what he was doing, he explained, “ The people back in my mountain village have never ever seen the ocean, so I’m catching some of it in this jar to take back to show them what I’ve seen.”

So often the best efforts of a filmmaker in telling what we have seen are little better than offering people our ‘jar’. But we have to start somewhere....

I hope in the course of this series to share some of the things I have learned, providing stories and cameos from the films I have made - and invite you to accompany me on my journey.