December and he was really busy at that time. I didn’t get permission to fi lm with him in the ambulance until a month later, after I did my fi rst interview. That really concerned me because if I didn’t get the ambulance then there was no fi lm, as I needed to see the people coming into the ambulance. That only happened a month after and we only had one chance to fi lm on the ambulance because he couldn’t do any other day.
How long was that day?
The day was 14 hours. I felt bad because he never stops. He only went back to the main station once to have a cup of tea spending only fi ve minutes there, and then he had to go back. I had to stay all day on the ambulance with him, all day long holding the camera. And I knew it was such a tight space at the back of the ambulance. It just was me with Anita [crew member] helping me out.
What was Anita doing?
I was fi lming non-stop with the
camera. Anita concentrated on getting permission from the patients. So I would stay with the camera and focus on Tom all the time, and Anita would get permission from the patients. She would enter the ambulance to talk to the patient to get their permission and I would wait outside. If the patient said OK, I would jump on the front.
But you also would have written consent forms?
Yes, we got forms from everyone at the end, including the hospital staff.
Permission from the local hospital. Can you describe the type of people you had to approach?
You need to know who you need to talk to; sometimes that is a diffi cult thing especially in the London Ambulance Service. Firstly there was Tom and Tom’s boss because he was the manager of that station. Then Tom’s boss told me to talk with the Communication Offi ce for the London Ambulance Service at home, and that is what I did. I explained the idea and so forth and then they gave me all the permission that I needed.
Joao Tristao – Ambulance Blogger
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How many hours of footage did you shoot? Eight tapes.
You produced and directed, how did you approach the edit strategy?
When you are fi lming you really have to think about the edit. So when I was fi lming I already knew which patients I really liked so that helped me out. Then when I got home I would watch all the tapes again and then I would paper edit. So I didn’t digitise all my tapes because it would be a waste of time. I would only digitise the good patients – fi ve or six patients in total, and then I started out with the ones I really liked the most, like a guy who took a lot of painkillers. I knew that that was really strong so I started editing his story fi rst. I constructed his story then I would do the same with three or four other patients. Then I would re-watch the interview that I did at his [Tom Reynold’s] place to try to see what they have in common, trying to match things. Trying to get the feeling of his work. I guess what I was trying to do was a video blog – the same thing Tom does in writing but on video.
If you had to make the fi lm again, would you do anything differently?
Yes, I think you always wish you had done something differently. If you had the chance to go back you would always do more. I think that the fi lm lacks a little bit on the Internet and blog side of the story. I needed to persist more with him, to go back one more day, but sometimes the person says, ‘Oh no, I am sorry I can’t.’ You have to be persistent sometimes and I felt that I wasn’t. Sometimes, when you spend the whole day fi lming, you just want it to be over. You need to persist to make a good fi lm; you need to believe in it.
Ambulance blogger quote Joao was impressed with Tom Reynold’s humorous and alternative
approach to his blog site. Oliv
e r G o o d ru m – B re a th in g I n > J o ao T ri st ao – A m b u la n c e B lo g g e r > D a n ie l a n d J e ss e Q u in o n e s – C ag e F ig h te r Job:01071 Title:BFM-Producing 2nd Proof Page:163 152-171_482_chapter6_C2.indd 163 152-171_482_chapter6_C2.indd 163 8/28/08 3:29:30 PM8/28/08 3:29:30 PM
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Daniel and Jesse Quinones
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The Quinones brothers are originally from Miami, Florida, but now live in London. They run their own production company, Woolfcub Productions
(www.woolfcub.com) which specialises in documentary and drama. They have already received several awards and nominations including ‘Best
Documentary’, at the International Student Film Festival Hollywood.
Can you talk about the fi rst documentary that you made? How did you get the idea and carry out the initial research? DQ: I guess you could say it came from me. I said I would like to make a fi lm about cage fi ghting, but we were both interested in it to some extent. It is a growing sport at the moment in the United States and it has been for a little while, but it is an underground sport. We decided to make a documentary about that.
JQ: It was a tricky situation because we needed to come up with something to meet the deadline for the course. The day Danny came up with the idea we called the Cage Rage Organization and talked to the PR department. They put us in touch with the promoter and he said, ‘Come to my next training session tomorrow night and I will introduce you to three fi ghters and you can take your pick’. So the next day we went to the meeting, to the training session. We brought our camera with us and fi lmed the training session and also fi lmed the three fi ghters doing a preliminary interview. We needed to decide who we wanted to dedicate our fi lm to. DQ: Who would be an interesting enough subject to sustain the fi lm for us and would have enough character that would come across on the screen. I guess not the kind of stereotypical fi ghter that you would normally expect to see. So we went with the guy who was the least stereotypical fi ghter. Probably the one out of the three that you would expect least.