I was asked to work on this film project by Maddi Nicholson of Art Gene. It was produced as part of the funded cultural programme running alongside the High Street Heritage Action Zone project for which Barrow Borough Council received government funding from Historic England.
This film stands apart from so many of the other films in my portfolio for many different reasons. It is by far the longest, at 28 minutes, and with the most edits. It was also a huge collaborative effort from many contributors, and I was conscious that everyone was relying on me to do justice to the extensive material that had been collected or provided. A lot of the work was done during lockdown which created additional hurdles.
It includes interviews and a voice over which I haven’t had in any earlier films, so the audio editing was a completely new challenge for me. I came up with a new technique to get the lower level footage, and I must have looked very strange walking up and down the street with my camera on a tall pole! The merging from past to present day photographs is one of my favourite bits of the film. If there was one thing i could change it would be to add in some kind of closing statement, as it does seem to end very abruptly!
The film was premiered over Zoom on Wednesday 7th July 2021 and billed as Re:discover Barrow – an Armchair Walk down Duke Street as when it was first proposed lockdown regulations would not have allowed a real group walk. As of December 2022 the film has been viewed on YouTube over 9,500 times.