Child poverty: filming Ewan
By Rachel Hellings, independent film-maker
At the outset, we discussed how we should approach potential contributors, for we knew that finding and getting access to case studies wasn’t going to be easy. We realised, too, that the terminology and language we used would be important. We
decided that the word 'poverty' wasn’t going to do us any favours. It can be offensive and it's vague. Instead we favoured terms such as 'low income' or disadvantaged'.
One of the biggest problems we faced was how to visualise poverty. By its very nature, it's an absence of something and therefore not obviously visual. This was particularly apparent when making the film about Ewan, a teenager who found himself homeless and living in rural poverty.
Our first problem was how to convey rural poverty – we were filming in a picturesque Cornish town and all our shots were very beautiful! The use of sync here was critical: by laying Ewan's commentary about the violence and unemployment that exists in the town over the picturesque shots, we were able to change the tone of the piece to reveal a very different story and challenge the perception of an idyllic Cornish village.
Secondly, Ewan’s story was retrospective and therefore there were no visible signs of 'poverty' apparent now. So we looked to enhance his words by using quite stylised images of Ewan which helped to convey the feelings of desperation and isolation he'd experienced.
Anonymity was something we really battled with. Children who are disadvantaged often feel marginalised and we were concerned that filming could exacerbate the problem. We also had to ask if there might be adverse reactions after the broadcast. So we decided to make at least one of our films anonymous – there are clear cases where anonymity is essential, such as covering a child refugee/asylum seeker story.
We were always mindful of our duty of care. In one particular film, Kelly, we were concerned about the snap judgements and blame an audience might apportion to someone who was addicted to crack and heroin at 16, and at 18 was expecting a baby. We tried to increase levels of understanding by letting her tell as much of her story as possible. With the use of statistics, we also tried to make her story representative.
Poverty is complicated and we sometimes found it helpful to include another person's perspective. We used a project worker to give us an overview of the issues and social disadvantage facing young people in her area. This added a valuable dimension that we wouldn't have got from the children themselves.
