Life Lines

Making of

How The Project Came About

The Lifelines project was instigated by a group of students from Ferndown Upper School, Dorset in June 2007.

Ferndown Upper School - We're O.K. Aren't We?

We're okay story board Ferndown students wished to make a film about how family breakdown affects young people. Nearly all of them had personal experience of this. They felt that coping with this experience was putting enormous pressure on their lives. Many were left caring for siblings, supporting their parents through difficult times and struggling to deal with their own relationships when home life was stressful. They had a strong desire to turn this negative in their lives into something creative and positive. They wanted to make a body of work that would express these concerns and allow others to share their experiences, feel less alone, reveal the diverse circumstances of modern families and gain access to a support network.

The Ferndown group approached PVA MediaLab to ask them to facilitate this project. Students at Sherborne Learning Centre also wanted to make a piece of work, expressing their ideas through film and animation, and had asked PVA MediaLab to work with them. A funding application was submitted to Mediabox and the project started in late November 2007.

We're okay filming Filmmakers Peter Snelling and James Price worked with both groups simultaneously. The Ferndown group began to develop a script for a fiction film. The starting point was family break-up seen through the eyes of the youngest daughter. Scriptwriting sessions took place through December and January. To begin with the group shared their own experiences and collected ideas. A breakthrough came one day when someone came in with a tale of a car crash a friend had been involved in. The focus of the film shifted away from domestic scenes. The crash became the central point of the film around which everything else revolved. The group were also keen to create a very individual look to the film – they watched other short films and pop videos to get inspiration. The camera team experimented with different methods of shooting and stop frame animation. The film (now titled “We’re ok, aren’t we?) was shot over 3 days in February, including one extremely cold day shooting the crash scene in an isolated Dorset lane. Every aspect of the shoot was undertaken by the young people with support from the PVA MediaLab team.

Sherborne Learning Centre - You're meant to like them.

You're meant to like them - filming Meanwhile the Sherborne group had been working on a documentary film, telling their own experiences of family life. To begin with they had workshops in camera and sound recording techniques. They then discussed the particular issues around documentary making. After these initial sessions they began to film each other talking about their lives. This was a sensitive process but they treated each other with great respect during the filming of these sessions. Following this part of the project they then began to consider what other material could be included to add interest and diversity to the documentary. They used stills cameras and animation techniques to create these materials. These pieces were edited with the young people during the sessions at the school.

Finally both films were edited at PVA MediaLab’s studios in Bridport. The young people were invited to input to the editing process and to take part in editing workshops.

Documentary

The making of We're O.K. Aren't We?