In the chiller…
The day after I arrived back from Uganda, I find myself in a meat slicing company dressed in hygiene clothing ready to shoot a corporate about their hygiene regime. Talk about sublime to ridicules! The temperature shift alone was 30 degrees, never mind the sleep deprivation. Still, we spent a short time amusing ourselves by filming a factory full of meat slicing operatives.
Funny thing was this. They are super strict about their hygiene policy and insisted on testing all our equipment for ‘bacterial loading’ before we could take it into the factory. This entailed swabbing various parts of our cameras and putting the swab into a testing gadget. Of course, my camera failed miserably but after a light dusting down with a alcohol wipe they were happy to let it in the factory. If only they could have seen where my camera had been just 24 hours before! I’d been filming cows in a field and shaking hands with numerous people in the surrounding areas of Nakaseke in Uganda, Africa and then handing my various parts of the camera. But just a light wipe with the alcohol wipes and they were satisfied. Crazy!
Here’s a nice picture of myself with the Fairview guys all dressed in our fashionable gear.
Mifunya Co-operative Society in Uganda
I’ve not long popped out of the other side of a lengthy edit of my latest short documentary. It’s amazing how much energy one expends when you edit for a week straight, day and night. Anyway. I think the results are good.
I’ll explain. I was recently asked to make a short film about a farming co-operative society in Nakaseke, Uganda. Proper, up country stuff with mud huts etc. I went with my photographer friend, Mark Kensett (hence the nice pictures here – thanks Mark), and our assignment was to document how the co-operative is getting on. It’s been about 2 or 3 years since they started and they seem to be making great progress. But you can see all this for yourself in the film.
It was quite a challenge. We had to leave at short notice and jet in and out of the country in just a few days. I shot it all on my Z7 (as you can see in the picture above) and was pretty pleased with the results.
The guy who runs the co-operative is called David Sseruwagi. An amazing guy that no only runs the co-operative, but also runs an orphanage, a secondary school and is the Pastor of a very lively church called the Uganda Gospel and Rehabilitation Centre. We had to make a couple of other little films which looked at the schools whilst we were there as well.
All in all, a hectic time. The equipment performed perfectly (got to love that Sony build quality) and we got back all in one piece. I hope you like the film…
Mifunya Co-operative Society, Nakaseke, Uganda from Jonathan Richards on Vimeo
Here’s a selection of the great pictures by Mark Kensett
