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“Peeing standing up is part of being a man”

duckrabbit — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 11:14:48 +0000

Here is a lovely, powerful and thought provoking insight (photofilm) into one man’s journey into blindness.

It was sent to me by Emily Macinnes, a young photography student at Nottingham Trent University, who rocked up to the duckrabbit/rhubarb training at the Format festival on Saturday (cracking event, thanks to all).

Remember that name, Emily Macinnes, she is going to be a great filmmaker.

Blindsight from Emily Macinnes on Vimeo.

RESPONSES:

Damian Drohan

Really beautiful and touching piece of work, very well crafted, well done Emily!
Lisa Hogben

Really, really the best piece of multi media story telling I have seen and the audio is delicious! Bravo Emily, wish I could do as well with my feeble attempts. I also have to say it definitely has that beautiful duckrabbit feel… Its the sanguine nature of the piece that gets to me… lovely, lovely stuff…

Ian Forsyth

Brilliant!

David White

First class work. The music does add to the piece … very carefully crafted audio, well done Emily, and thanks of course to Dennis also.

ciara

best thing I’ve watched in ages.
Made even better by one of the best tracks by one of the best bands around.
Thanks Emily, and Dennis.

Niamh Nic Carthaigh

This moved me deeply. A member of my family has lost a lot of her eyesight already and this beautifully made piece helped me ‘see’ her reality a little more clearly. It is so beautifully made. Dennis is inspiring. Emily captured his story with incredible dignity. Thanks!

Tom White

tomwhitephotography.com

I can relate to this – my eyes aren’t that bad but I am very short sighted and without my glasses I can’t make out anything further than a couple of inches from my nose, so a lot of what he describes resonates. I too get that odd firework display thing when I close my eyes, it’s kinda like the end of Kubriks 2001, which is pretty cool sometimes, except when you really need to sleep and your optic nerve is misfiring (or whatever it is)and keeping you awake …

I love the way this is put together. Great stuff. And yes, peeing standing up is definitely part of being a man.

‘he would have lived’

Ciara Leeming — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 21:43:19 +0000

If you were in any doubt about the damage America’s healthcare system wreaks on some families, then watch this piece. Part of a series by Everynone

That is all.

yours, Radio fan girl

Pete Masters, MSF’s web editor, fires a warning shot to photographers

duckrabbit — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 09:33:07 +0000

On paper Pete Masters is the web editor of MSF UK, and although he is a bit of a geek, Pete is so much more … he’s duckrabbit’s best ever student.

Now whilst MSF go into really troubled places and save lives (and a lot more), Pete isn’t all humanitarian, because secretly on the side he’s become a killer of photographers.

How so?

duckrabbit trained Pete in the basics of producing photofilms. Not long ago he took himself off to Sri Lanka and produced the following photofilm for MSF UK.

I have to tell you it’s much, much better than the efforts of many professional photographers.

So if I have a budget and I can either hire Martin Nachtwey or Pete Masters, I would hire Pete. Why? With Pete I get some great pictures and I also get a cracking photofilm; something that ACTUALLY gives voice to the people I am trying to help.

If you are a photographer, one with a website telling me that your passionate about human rights, poverty and social injustice, and you want to work in the humanitarian sector, then you need to compare yourself to Pete, a guy who only picked up a camera and a microphone twelve months ago. He’ll never have a trust fund sponsored show at VISA, but his work is reaching a hell of a lot more people.

Sooner or later every decent sized NGO will have a Pete, god knows they need one. Hopefully a fair few of them will be professional photographers, who have picked themselves up other skills.

Which brings me to what really matters. Not Pete, not Martin, but Suvarna, and her brave road to recovery.

Suvarna’s story from msf_uk on Vimeo.

The Green Book Materials

duckrabbit — Sat, 22 May 2010 14:06:42 +0000

This is a masterclass in documentary production. Nothing is out of place. Watch for the ending. It just crushed me.

The Green Book Materials from phos pictures on Vimeo.

Don McCullin Audio Slideshow on the BBC – Shaped by the War

duckrabbit — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:21:16 +0000

Don McCullin is not only a great photographer but he’s also a great talker. I caught him this morning on the BBC’s TODAY programme. It was a powerful listen. Important too to hear a photographer talk about the cost to his mental health of the work he does. The BBC are hosting an audio slideshow:

Don McCullin is one of the world’s most acclaimed photographers, whose thought-provoking images have helped our understanding of modern conflict and its consequences.

To mark his 75th year, Imperial War Museum North in Greater Manchester is showcasing his work.
From Berlin, to Vietnam and Cambodia – take a tour with him.

You can also see an audio slideshow of duckrabbit’s David White on the BBC here.

Bruno Stevens, on Haiti (audio slideshow)

duckrabbit — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:04:28 +0000

This powerful audio slideshow is brought impressively to life by Olince Calixte, a blind street musician from Port au Prince.

It’s also a journey from pain, trauma and shock through to the first signs of recovery. For me it tells a much more balanced story of the aftermath than many sets of photos out there. Thank you Bruno for sharing this with the world, its a tribute to the human spirit.

Warning, there are some extremely graphic and upsetting images in this set.

Do unto others …

duckrabbit — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 13:25:36 +0000

Very roughly some 2000 years ago we nailed some bloke called Jesus to a tree.

Nothing new about that. Nailing people to trees was a rather effective form of crowd control.

Since then though a lot of people have been following this Jesus bloke. One of his oft quoted mantras was treat other people people as you would like to be treated yourself. Not a bad idea hey?

You’d think that after two thousand years the idea might have caught on? At the very least amongst Christians.

No chance:

(this is one of the video’s duckrabbit recently produced for their amazing Condition Critical website)

“We never knew”

duckrabbit — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:07:19 +0000

(click on photo, the video player will load, then click again to play)

It’s one of those moments you don’t forget.

This term I’ve been a guest lecturer at Birmingham City University. I sat twenty students down in front of one of the four videos we’ve been producing for MSF (more of that in a minute) and pressed play …

The response was terrible.

At the end nobody wanted to say anything. Not a single comment. Just a shattering silence and unease as the class shuffled out the door.

Over the last couple of months duckrabbit has been working with Robin Meldrum from MSF (audio) and the photographers Martin Beaulieu Julie Remy, Yasuyoshi Chiba, and Dominic Nahr , to record and produce four videos for the final chapter of their Condition Critical website.

The idea has been to bring awareness to the terrible conflict in the East of the Congo.

A lot of famous photographers have made their names in this patch of the world. We are often exposed to their black and white images that have no doubt played an important role in sharpening minds to the conflict but also reinforce negative stereotypes about the dark continent. There’s undeniable beauty and depth in the work of photographers like Marcus Bleasdale but all too often photo editors, in their insatiable blood lust for the edge, pick out the most despairing shots. Even Bleasdale takes ‘darkness’ as the title of his book.

Ultimately, out of context, these singularly negative images have become a cliched, two dimensional and self defeating form of journalism, because all they ask of us is to pity these wretched people and admire the artistry of the photographer.

I would like to think that duckrabbit’s work with MSF goes some way to showing that these people neither ask, nor need your pity.

The name and style of the photographer is the last thing we hope people think about when watching our work.

Over the next few days I’ll be popping the videos up for you to have a look at. MSF hoped that they would prompt people to leave a message of support for the people of Eastern Congo on an interactive map on the Condition Critical Website. Sounds a bit daft doesn’t it? Surely what they need is cash, right?

Well first off if you watch the videos you can find out a little about their lives, that they’re not that much different to you and me except that they’ve been caught up in an unforgiving conflict. Secondly messages of support do make a difference. I know this because last year I worked in camps in Kenya and the thing that people were most frightened of was being forgotten, the sense that no-one cared. That’s what leads to depression and despair. Worse than that, when no-one cares people get away with murder, literally.

So the fact that MSF will take these messages and share them in the camps and clinics will make a difference. It will also give a huge morale boost to the MSF staff working in Eastern Congo.

So If you’ve enjoyed reading duckrabbit blog over the last year and if you’re moved by any of the video’s please let us know what you think and then go and leave a message of support on the map. That’s exactly what many of my students who so silently watched the video in class did. They obviously needed time to take in what they’d seen.

One of them sought me out privately afterwards to say:

‘”We were shocked. Not by the video but because we never knew.”

Please feel free to embed this video on blogs, and facebook and twitter the Condition Critical Website.

“Jack wasn’t going to get killed.”

duckrabbit — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:52:47 +0000

Paul Kerley has produced a powerful audio slideshow about a father who lost his son in Afghanistan. It works on so many levels.

First off it shows that you don’t need great pictures for a quality audio slideshow, that infact most of the time it’s the audio that is the driver.

Secondly it shows that you don’t need to slap music over powerful audio. To do so here would be trite.

Thirdly it shows that it’s enough to hear in someone’s voice how close they are to tears, we don’t actually need to hear them break down. I’m sure this man lost it during the interview. I would have. But the producer has showed good taste and respect in leaving this out, focusing on the relationship between the father and son.

Mr Sadler, if you read this, duckrabbit would like to express how gutted we are you lost your son. Words fail us.

Audio slideshow: Soldier and son

Trooper Jack Sadler was killed in December 2007, when a land mine exploded underneath his army Land Rover in the desert of southern Afghanistan.

At the inquest into the death of the 21-year-old, in July this year, a coroner in Exeter said the government should explain why such light vehicles were used for army reconnaissance patrols.

The MoD says safety of personnel is a prime concern and new equipment and vehicles have been delivered to forces.

Jack was Ian Sadler’s only child. Here, he pays a moving tribute to his son.

Charities, journalism and PR

duckrabbit — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 18:02:46 +0000

Adam Westbrook was one of a number of bloggers who followed up on duckrabbit’s post on MSF’s new cinema advert with a much wider analysis of how charities communicate:

‘At the heart of this lies the important question of how charities choose to spread their word. The public generally are now far less trusting of spin and PR. We want true stories, and we want them as gritty as the real world is. But we also want balance – and we recognise a third-world-cliche when we see it.’

Here on duckrabbit Matty C posed this question:

‘Let me ask you something. You’re the director of Human Rights Watch. I’m some random Nathan Barley-type from a Soho ad agency. I pitch you a campaign that involves showing a re-enaction of a child being tortured – on screen. I’m also armed with a big wad of data that suggests such a campaign would triple HRW’s donation income in the forthcoming financial year.

Would you even consider green lighting that project?‘

Sadly, truthfully for many the answer is yes. The end justifies the means.

If you watch the first 45 seconds of this important film by HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, you’ll see that nothing beats real footage to bring home a message. Put some text on this and you’ve got one hell of an advert.

You don’t have to see or hear human suffering and misery to be persuaded that something awful is going on, that something needs to be done, that I should support organizations who can help stop these war crimes: