A bit of history

Matt first approached me in autumn 2010 with an idea to make a short film following his mission to drastically cut his carbon emissions. The first episode ended with a bang - literally - as Matt crushed his car on camera.

We followed it up in February 2011 with a horrendous visit to a landfill site and Matt's new mission to stop wasting any food or packaging. 

Each film usually begins with an idea from Matt himself - after all, he's the one that actually has to do the challenge. He does a lot of the "producing" work too - arranging locations, research and writing the script. We send the script back and forth, tightening the words - and I look for any opportunities to tell the story visually. Here's how the script started to take shape for film three.

As with most shooting scripts, it is divided into two columns: on the right Matt's script (or "sync") and on the left hand side visual notes about what we see on screen. This is the part I use to come up with picture ideas.

We filmed it all on one Sunday in November - as it happened, the last dry, bright sunny Sunday of the year. We filmed in Matt's own garden. It's quite a small space, so I brought in a light-weight stabiliser to allow me to create smooth walking shots. 

One visual element I was keen to include was to use the building of the bio-digester as the main structure to the film. Matt spends the whole video building it, while giving us all the background information at the same time. This progression is a nice way to keep viewers interested longer: hopefully they wait to see what it is he's building.

Another key element to explaining the science of anaerobic respiration was the use of simple graphics which appear alongside Matt. They began life as felt-tip drawings on a sheet of paper (drawn by Matt):

They were then photographed, and ran through the photo-editing software GIMP to create simple transparencies of each image. These were then animated in Apple Motion, and motion-tracked to the movement of the camera.

Finally, a quick word on the use of a steadicam: as I mentioned earlier it allowed me to create more movement in an otherwise static environment. But it really only comes to life in the last act - where Matt crosses the garden to start filling his demi-john. Steadicams differ from dolly shots in that they create the impression of a single audience member following the action, as if you were also walking in the garden with him. I asked Matt to beckon to the camera to make the most of this effect. 

For more like this, visit my blog on online video and entrepreneurial journalism or follow me on Twitter: @adamwestbrook