The Final Countdown: A Look Back

It’s less than 24 hours now until the final documentary is released and before you see the finished product, I wanted to reflect on some of the challenges I’ve faced putting it all together.

A major part of any television documentary are the visuals and initially I was unsure of how I would represent allergies in an engaging way. Fortunately, my interviewees spoke in depth about what it’s like to live with allergies and their journey. This allowed me to create the reconstruction you see at the start of the documentary, immediately plunging you straight into the middle of a severe anaphylactic reaction.

The reconstruction posed its own challenges as I did not want to trivialise or misrepresent what was being spoken about. I provided the actors with the interview audio and filmed multiple takes to ensure it fitted the tone. The night before filming one of the actors pulled out. Thankfully, I was able to source a last-minute replacement and bring him up to speed.

To get powerful stories I needed good interviewees and social media is a great tool to reach people. Once you find someone suitable, it’s about convincing them to speak to you. Being an online project without backing from a media organisation does make things harder, but you have to keep persevering: if you can’t get an interview from a company, try for an official statement. This approach worked for Mylan when I was trying to find out information about the EpiPen shortage.

Other times it just doesn’t happen, but you have to keep going. I had one occasion where I found a great expert who seemed happy to be interviewed on-camera. However, once I got through to his media department and gave them all the details, they denied my request. It would have been great to do this interview, but it made me even more determined to speak to someone else of equal standing and I am very thankful to both Michel and Ramesh for taking the time to speak to me.

The documentary is centred around human interest stories so it was vital to find the right interviewees.

This documentary was all about planning and organisation. It’s an individual project and although I managed to get a cameraman to help me on some shoots, which I am very grateful for, for the most part I was flying solo. This created its own logistical challenges, from physically getting the equipment to and from a location to being tactful in the way I filmed so I could still get quality shots, even though I was on my own.

I had to leave myself time to edit, reflect and re-edit. The danger with doing everything yourself is you become too wrapped up in the documentary and ‘can’t see the wood from the trees’ so to speak. To prevent this, I engaged the help of others to watch the documentary through fresh eyes and give me feedback on things that they found unclear. Hopefully three months of hard work has paid off and you’ll enjoy the documentary.

Please do tweet @allergyepidemic with your thoughts after watching, I would really appreciate it. Happy viewing!