Guest blogger, Emily James, is currently in production on a feature documentary about environmental direct action groups, including Plane Stupid, Climate Camp, and Climate Rush. The film is crowd funded, and will be released under a Creative Commons license in early 2011.


Getting a TV broadcast commission has its pros and cons. On the upside, you’ve got the money to make your film and a relatively guaranteed audience. On the down side you lose editorial, stylistic, and production control, and from the filmmaker’s point of view, the compromises can often be difficult to swallow.

I’ve made plenty of films for TV, for a variety of broadcasters, and I’ve learned the game. I went to talk to a few of them when I first started filming for what would become Just Do It, but I quickly realised that on this one, I wasn’t prepared to compromise.

Why not? Well, a few reasons:

Firstly, it had taken a great deal of time and effort to gain the trust of the activists whom I was filming, and I didn’t want to sell out that trust either by framing their story in the style of storytelling which passes for ‘objectivity’ at the moment, or in a way which broadcasters and commissioning editors believe ‘audiences will come to’. I realised that I believed in what the activists were doing, and I wasn’t going to pretend differently.

Secondly, I wanted to pursue my vision for the film, and to have the freedom to make what I believed could be an important and significant social contribution I believed that there was an audience for a film which playfully and cheekily championed the cause of direct action, and that with the privileged access which I had, I could make a unique film which did not fit easily into TV boxes, but would be all the more exciting for it. The film I had in mind might not attract 2.3 million TV viewers at 9pm on a Thursday (though to be honest, I think it would if given the chance), but I genuinely believed that internationally, there was most certainly a large audience who would come to it.  I wanted the film to be able to find that audience over time, rather than shot-gunned out in one splurge on TV and then never seen again.

Thirdly, this film was going to be a legal minefield. *sigh* As Marina (one of our main characters) often says, “frankly, the law is an ass”. Broadcasters have to be careful. They have their licenses and deep pockets to protect. I’ve had my fair share of forced changes to shows in order to get the stamp of approval from the legal department, and I’ve witnessed a shed load more. I knew that I would want to take risks with this film: I would want to name names, and let my characters state their case against the targets of their direct action. If I self-published, the risks would be mine to take.

And finally, I wanted to go all-out and pursue a bold vision for the entire project – not just on screen, but off – and make it a forward looking experiment in Creative Commons, crowd funding, and bespoke distribution.  A film which was about people coming together to work towards a progressive vision of the future seemed like the perfect place to test out these new ideas.

With the production of Just Do It we are attempting to re-imagine the relationship between audience and producers, shifting audiences from being passive consumers to active participants and decision makers. It’s an attempt to help carve a path from our current world of commodification and commercialisation towards one of creative production and free communications of ideas. Idealistic? Yes indeed.

To find out more about Emily’s current project – Just Do It: get off your arse and change the world check out the website – www.just-do-it.org.uk. Emily will be guest blogging about the project here at Shooting People over the next couple of weeks. Starting tomorrow, and for 20 days, all donations to the project will be matched, pound for pound, but Lush Cosmetics, so go on over and make a donation.