PRODUCTION BLOG

The Full Story

How did this topic come about?

I first started to think about my MMP when we had our first lecture about the unit, it was told to us that we should choose the topic on something that we'd be genuinely interested in, and it wasn't just another piece of work that we did. Well, my Christian faith plays a huge part in my life so that's when I started to think about what I could do that was related to my faith.

In a conversation with a former third year, I was talking to her about all the things that I could do on and we got to the subject of the things that the Christian church could do better on. There are lists of things that the church has got wrong and things that need to improve and one of the things that she told me was that perhaps I could do some research and see whether there is something there that I could dig deeper.

So, I started doing research and I came across an article about the ‘From Lament to Action’ report. The article highlighted that the church must take decisive steps to address the legacy of the C of E’s involvement in the slave trade. But what really stood out to me was reading the report and the admission that if the church doesn’t do anything now then it’ll be the ‘last straw for many’. That sense of urgency compelled me to do this.

So, I started looking at ministry statistics, trying to find a small thread where I could find something that would help me to find a lead for this story and it’s where I came across the number of people from UKME background in training for ordination.

In 2017, of those beginning training in the CofE, 6.2% identified from BAME background, looking at the 2020 numbers that number goes up to 10.9%, this is a noticeable increase, and the church says its one that ‘continues the trend of recent years’. There, I found the lead I was looking for; I had the evidence that the church was trying to bring in more ethnically diverse clergy, all I had to do was keep going and see where this story took me.

From then it was about finding the right people to talk to, I reached out to a couple of members from the taskforce and fortunately I managed to secure an interview with Ben Nicholls, a youth worker for a church in London. He was very happy to speak to me about the report and what he wished the report accomplished.

In one of the meetings, I had with my supervisor, one of things he wanted me to do was try find someone who was behind this notable increase of people in training, the people who were moving this needle and that’s where my contacts came in handy.

A few months earlier, one of the student leaders from the church I attend had moved up to London for a new job opportunity and when I reached out to her to see if she knew anyone that would be willing to help, she sent out an email to multiple people who she thought could help me with this work.

This got me in touch with Rosemarie Davidson-Gotobed, who is the National Minority Ethnic vocations officer in the Church of England. Her job is to facilitate and support the journey that one has to go through as someone from ethnic minority background. She supports them by making sure they are being followed up by counsellors.

I knew in reaching out to Rosemarie that she’d be the person to help answer the question who is behind this little change, and what can the church do to carry on with this change.

The way that I wanted this documentary to go about would be that I wanted the interviews to take the lead, I essentially did not want to have to do many pieces to camera, not because I didn’t feel comfortable to do so but because I wanted to explore that style of editing where I let the interviewees be the story tellers. Hence why I got them to introduce themselves at the start with name and their role or position in their place of work.

 I had seen some VICE videos – my chosen publication – and I wanted to let the interviewees speak for themselves. However when I came to discuss this with my supervisor, I realised that there were some gaps that needed to be filled and that I probably would need to film some pieces to camera in the end.

Therefore, when planning the questions, I was going to ask, I knew I had to ask some rather simple questions just so that the interviewees could say everything I wanted them to say.

I knew that for me to tell a good story I needed someone who was going through a similar experience of that which I was talking about – someone from another country who was thinking about ordination in the Church of England. So, I reached out to a friend of mine who had recently graduated from Bournemouth University. He and I had conversations about him thinking about ordination and so I kind of knew what he was going through and the kind of questions he was asking, and it was those same questions that I came to ask him during our interview.

I was always aware of how sensitive this issue is, racism is something people tend to shy away from talking about as it is something very sensitive that has caused a lot of pain for people. So before doing interviews would people, I wanted to make sure that my interviewees felt comfortable with me asking these questions, I also wanted to let Rosemarie who was so open to talk about this issue as someone who represented the church of England what my intentions were with this piece of work.

I made sure that they knew that I wasn’t trying to stir up trouble in any way, I simply wanted to talk about the issues that the face is facing but I also wanted to show what the church is doing to combat this. So before filming my interview with Charles and Rosemarie I had an opportunity to talk to them off-record and introduce myself and walk them through what my plans were and to make sure they felt comfortable with it. This also allowed me to prepare for the interview because it gave me a chance to hear what they wanted to say and go away from that and think of a structure to the documentary.

What I found most valuable about it was that in having that pre-interview chat was that I able organise the content that would be brought up and allowed me to begin to sense the structure this project would take.

When it came to film those interviews, because we had that chat beforehand, I felt a lot more comfortable to listen to what was being said and allowed me to relax slightly as I was listening to their answers and often come up with follow-up questions that allowed me to get even more content and good answers from the interviewees.

I also interviewed a member of the taskforce, Ben Nicholls, but unfortunately due to the time of the piece, I couldn’t include him on the final cut, instead what I have chosen to do is include his answers in some extra work to be hosted on my website.

When it came filming my pieces to cameras, I asked for permission from a local vicar to film at a church nearby. He was welcoming and more than happy for me to use the church grounds to film and that’s where I did all my pieces to camera.

Filming outside the church on very cold day is arguably not the most comfortable way of filming a piece to camera, but because of our limited resources (such as not the right lighting) we had to film the pieces outside and then any OOVs that I wanted to capture would be indoors. In hindsight I wish I had hired some LED lights to help me while filming.

When I finished filming, we got to the most exciting part for me which is editing. This is what I enjoy the most as this is where I feel my creative mind really thrives and I’m able to turn what I’ve pictured for while into reality.