Shining a light on poor housing in the UK
Drummond TV founder Rachel Drummond-Hay describes how her team met a filming challenge from the UWE public engagement team.
We were really pleased to be asked to make this series of films for Truud. We generally make longer form documentaries but relished the challenge of shorter form films with a very specific target audience. The challenge for us was to make programmes that were engaging whilst giving room to present data and statistics that would resonate with policy makers and housing developers.
Our first challenge was to find great characters around whom the films could be centred. Although the films had difficult subject matters, we wanted to film with people who were in some way relatable to the audience. We knew that people would be more likely to engage with the predicament of a person who could be their mother in law, or the person who ran their local shop – rather than someone they had no connection with or empathy for. We searched for contributors through local charities as well as people put forward through the Truud partners, and spent some time visiting all potential characters before choosing our final interviewees. In our final selection we were looking for diversity in both the people themselves, the types of housing they lived in and the housing issues they faced.
As always with filming we were moved by the stories of the people we interviewed – however difficult our characters found their living conditions, they did their absolute best to make the most of their situation and do their best for their family. Editing the films was tricky partly because there was so much good material but we had to keep cutting it down to get to the desired length, without losing the heart of the personal stories. Also we had to have sign off from a committee which always brings different voices and opinions. However the committee had very specialist knowledge and I think everyone felt the power of the personal stories so there was overall good consensus.
I really hope that these films will shine a light on some of the terrible housing conditions very ordinary people have to put up with and live in in this country, and go some way to make change for the better. We at Drummer TV are proud to have been a part of the TRUUD project and hope the films are a success.
