Cities and Edits | The Friday Update

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Friday Update, in which I give a little insight into what I’ve been up to for the past seven days.

What have I been up to this week?

You might know that the video we’re releasing next focuses on British cities going bankrupt.

Over the last few years, a number of local city and county councils here in the UK have issued what’s called a Section 114 notice; effectively announcing that they’ve run out of cash.

Unpacking why involves looking into several factors including the complex interplay between national and local government in the UK and the funding granted to cities by the government in London.

If that doesn’t sound complex enough, the way we’ve decided to tell this story is quite different to how we’ve made videos before. Rather than filming the video on a set or in a single location, we went on a road trip and filmed various sections in various different locations.

And, as we’ve been getting deep into the editing phase this week, we’ve found editing all that to be a much more complex task.

Ordinarily, I write a script for a video and then record a voiceover and some pieces to camera. “Editing” then largely involves finding archive footage and creating animations to lay over the top of that.

This time round, we have pieces to camera, bits of voiceover, vox pops, interviews with politicians and some “narrative” sections which follow me as I travel around the country. There’s a lot going on!

Trying to take account of all these elements as we edit is a big challenge.

We have to make sure there’s the right mix of each aspect whilst also ensuring the video is well-paced as a whole.

Hopefully it all comes together; but, either way, I can feel we’re gonna learn a lot from this making one!

And outside of work?

Last weekend, I went on a friends’ stag weekend. (I think Americans call this a Batchelor party?).

While the organising of it all was a surprise, he’d asked to go to Edinburgh and so the friends who were organising it obliged!

It was all a bit messy. In true British form, we had a lot to drink over four days and did a whole bunch of activities including bowling, shuffleboard, caber-tossing (Highland Games-style) and bingo.

It was jam packed and definitely took me a day or two to catch up energy-wise when I got back.

Nevertheless, I do love a weekend away and it was definitely worth it! The friend that’s getting married seemed to have a great time too, which is the main thing!

What have I been reading/watching/listening to?

Like much of the rest of the UK (and maybe elsewhere in the world too?), I spent a bunch of last week watching Baby Reindeer on Netflix.

The series tells the true-life story of a comedian who was on the receiving end of two different cases of abuse: he was stalked over a period of months and was also groomed, drugged and sexually assaulted a few years earlier.

The series is an adaptation of a stageplay by Richard Gadd (who also stars in the TV show) which was a hit at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2019.

I spent a number of years during my time working in theatre going up to the festival, which also features during the show; so it had an additional resonance for me (and the many thousands of others who visit the festival each year I’m sure!).

This felt like the best version of the kind of show that tends to dominate in Edinburgh. It was confessional and brave at the same time as being hilariously funny and disarming.

It’s certainly not for the feint of heart; but that’s to be respected. It’s quite something for Gadd to have relived his experiences so many times on stage and now to have shared them with the whole world in the form of a TV show.

There’s been some “discourse” online and in the media about how well the show did or didn’t anonymise the real people behind the story.

Viewers have apparently been able to identify at least one of Richard Gadd’s (the writer and star of the show whose story it tells) abusers.

Nevertheless, the ethics of that are obviously incredibly hazy given the context of what the show’s about. There’s an interesting question in there about how much good will or protection one owes those who have done such substantial harm.

If you haven’t seen the show yet, I’d definitely recommend taking the time to. Go in prepared: it’s a challenging watch. But it certainly felt like a really unique bit of telly.

That brings us to the end of this week’s edition of the Friday Update. I hope you’ve found it mildly insightful.

Thanks as ever for your generous support and I’ll look forward to updating you more next week!!