Video of Manchester (depressing)

[Elbonio]

thought i mightaswell post this up in case anyone's interested


I did it a while ago for my church. All they said to me was that they wanted to show the rough and bad sides of Salford/manchester

so i did but it came out really depressing!


I did all the camera work from the back of a minibus with a canon XL5 camera (which are SO nice... I get wet dreams about them...)

http://cweb.canon.jp/dv/lineup/xl1s/img/point5-01.jpg


*anyway* the video is reasonable quality and is 9MB

Right Click and goto "Save Target As..." (http://www.urbanhousework.com/crap/salfordlow.wmv)


It was tough in a way becuase all the footage we got was done on one night and that minibus was awful bumpy so the camera moves around alot.

We spent ages trying to find a prostitute to film (she appears at the very start of the film).

It was rather amusing having this big minibus stalking prostitutes with "Bethel Christian Centre" written on the side in big letters!

The interview with Dave the homeless guy I did with my pappy little Panasonic DV camera and the sound is pretty awful on that camera so i ended up with some superb footage from him but really bad quality sound which i was very annoyed at... i managed to tweak the audio a bit though


anyway comments would be good as im going to be doing alot more video editing this year and i'd like to get peoples opinions on what could be done better etc. ta.


Ps yes i know it's depressing!

[dele]

omg i so want one of thoose cameras, but im so poor im having to go for the sony vx1000

[Elbonio]

trust me you DEFINATELY want one of those cameras


it is just humming with quailty

[Silk75]

Elbonio

I have to ask myself what you were trying to achieve with this film?

I assume that with it being for your church, that this was going to be a pretty biased film featuring various run down locations, etc etc. Obviously any city or large town will have the problems that you have highlighted, such as homelessness, kids playing in the streets after dark (and presumably causing trouble), graffitti (although the bits you featured were quite sarcastic social commentary graffitti) and things like McDonalds and the Boddingtons brewery.

McDonalds, whilst supplying nutritionally dodgy food, is not a vector for poverty in this country AFAIK.

AFAIK Boddingtons is not a depressing feature for Manchester, but more like a reassuring link to the past for a lot of Mancunians, harkening back (to the not so good days) of those 'dark satanic mills'. In short industrial heritage in 21st Centruty Manchester.

You failed to show the redevelopment of various areas of the city centre, most obviously URBIS and Metrolink. You also failed to show the redevelopment of various areas of Salford centre itself.

In short you could have done a lot more to be balanced.

Oh and the fading(?) in of a homeless guy and the 'all you can eat' chinese restaurant sign is so insulting. Yes excess and want exist side by side, but thats the challenge of the decade isn't it?
To reduce such disparities.

In the whole I did not enjoy your film because of the bias mentioned above, but any efforts to raise those difficult features that you have raised needs to be applauded and elevated.

I would mention this more as a film showing issues that we all face in inner cites and large towns and that we all need to overcome.

I will leave the technical bits to someone more knowledgeable, but they didn't particularly detract from the piece, whilst the music was a very good choice to evoke emotion about the issues.

Well done, and please do some more of this ilk.

[Zenith]

He's not the fecking BBC Silk!
The original brief was "All they said to me was that they wanted to show the rough and bad sides of Salford/manchester". There was no mention made or implied about balanced reporting and so Elbonio fulfilled his brief well. :p:

As for McDonalds being a vector for poverty, I have to disagree with you. Social study after social study has shown repeatedly that those on low income or poverty line are the ones who buy nutritionally poor food (think of store branded food items). These foods while being cheap are laden with salt, sugar and fat... all things shown to contribute to obesity and cardiac problems. That is why a lot of the people who are on low income are also overweight. You are more likely to buy quality branded or fresh foods if you have a household income that is even slightly better than national minimum wage.

Thus speaks the voice of experience. :)

[Elbonio]

Well the idea of the film was to go to a presentation to be shown at a large meeting between our church and various other churches in the area, highlighting some of the problems facing us at the start of the new year.

It wasn't suppoed to be just run down areas it was supposed to be along the theme of the colder side of the world.

As for it being very bias that was the idea as this was one of two videos - the second video being a) much less depressing and b) showing the things we want to try and do in the city (incidently i did not do the second video)

As we live in Manchester we didnt feel the need to publicise it by showing its many (and they far outweigh the bad points) good points. We would be preaching to the converted at the risk of using a pun.

And believe me there is nobody around who goes on and on about how great Manchester is more than I do... nobody...

McDonalds is the ultimate symbol of cold, hard capitalism. Ironic really since after taking that shot we all went into it for something to eat. Whilst we have nothing against McDonalds itself it was what it represents which we were trying to convey.

As for the boddingtons factory the film was nothing to do with heritage. It was a passing shot that at the time looked very impressive and I filmed it just becuase I kept the camera rolling the whole time. When I got back however I was quite impressed with the feel it gave - it doesnt look particularly inviting to me in that shot, regardless of whether it is an icon of Manchesters cultural heritage or not. In other words it looked good so i stuck it in. The "dark satanic mills" part seemed the most appropriate part of the song dont you think?

The homeless guy mixed in with the all you can eat sign I thought was the ultimate irony. That sign that you can see saying "eat all you can" is about 100m away from that old homeless guy, who it turns out hadnt eaten at all that day. I wasnt intended to be insulting merely highlighting both ends of the scale so to speak.

Thanks for the comments i appreciate it. Hope this has cleared up some of the thoughts behind it?