The Land Documentary

Hampshire is well known for its rich history, beautiful countryside, wild life and sleepy villages. It is now occupied by wealthy people, expensive stores and a large number of curious tourists who come to the county every day to get to know the roots of Hampshire’s history. However, it hasn’t always been this way. Places such as Winchester, Southampton, New Forest and Basingstoke have dramatically changed since the rural times. Today they are modern and sophisticated. During rural times they were simple, primitive and overpopulated.

Farming used to play a huge part of Hampshire’s life, influencing the landscape and people’s lives. It was an essential factor to help the economy run, bringing food and other products to sustain life. When the technology started to develop life in Britain became very hard. As new machines were invented, people were no longer needed to do farming jobs so they moved to the cities. The cities became overcrowded. Many people didn’t have a job and were very poor. People stole things to survive. This was seen as a crime which caused masses of people to be transported to Australia.

The land documentary is supposed to show Hampshire and its history; and how it developed after the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial revolution, of course, eventually won the competition with the rural industries and the urbanisation started in the 19th century. Industrial revolution also effected transportation. In the 19th century bicycles, steamships and trains made it easier for people to move further away. In the 20th century, the explosion motor further accelerated this process. An ever-growing part of world population became subdued to market economy. The revolution was something more than just new machines, smoke-belching factories, increased productivity and an increased standard of living.

Initially, as a team of three, we chose to film Hampshire from William Cobbett’s point of view. The view that he included in his Rural Rides. On this theme, his Rural Rides has proved his most enduring work. It is a collection of journals written during his tours on horseback between 1822 and 1826, observing rural conditions and discussing the political perceptions of the agricultural community. William Cobbett was a journalist who didn’t agree with the British government but who believed that reforming Parliament and stopping the rotten boroughs would help to end the poverty of farm labourers. He was brought up by his father who owned a farm. This has certainly put countryside to his heart.

The planning stage of the documentary was simple as we knew exactly what we wanted our film to look like. We got together in order to write down all the ideas that came to our heads and pictured everything scene by scene. We decided that we would have two people talking in the whole documentary. One of them would be a historian who tells us the story of Hampshire, and who also talks about William Cobbett, his love for countryside, but also about Industrial Revolution, emigration and overpopulation. In the end, we had to drop that idea and focus on just countryside instead due to an interview we arranged which didn’t go the way we wanted to. The second person talking would be a voice over reading out a poem called ‘The mask of anarchy’ by Shelley, alongside with quiet music in the background- Ralph Vaughan Williams, Tallis Fantasia- that would put the audience watching the documentary into a lovely, nostalgic mood. The historian we chose is a lecturer at Winchester University, Jean, who specialises in William Cobbett and rural history. We also got in touch with Collin Firth’s agent because we thought it would make the documentary look very professional if he read out the poem for us, however he we were unsuccessful and therefore we went for Tony Dean- the Dean of Winchester University. Instead of the historian we asked an English Literature student- Hollie Ward- to be a narrator to a script we wrote about Hampshire’s rural life and our own interpretation of the poem.

We went to Salisbury, to film a beautiful and frosty sun rise as an establishment to the documentary. Salisbury was our starting point because of its rich history and wonderful scenery, such as the cathedral and fields filled with beautiful flowers, horses, sheep and an easy countryside life. It shows how relaxing and simple farm life is now comparing to the one people were leading before the Industrial Revolution.

The next stop was Southampton and Winchester to show the contrast between a country side and a busy city life. We filmed the Southampton gates and the high streets with many shops and people rushing around trying to get to work.  We didn’t use any of the shots in the final edit because we focused on countryside.

In the editing stage we cut the music into shimmers, swells, themes and bed in order to then choose the right pictures and put them in an accurate position matching the music and giving the whole documentary colour. We cut Hollie’s speech and Tony’s poem and put them in the places we thought they fit in. We thought making long pauses in between talking and stings after their speeches would make it sound more affective and be more interesting to watch. We used long pans of the country side and river to emphasis the nature of rural life. Our bit of the overall Land project is 5 minutes 20 seconds long.

Overall, the project was a great experience and a good way to finish the university course. It was more relaxed than any other projects ever done before but at the same time it was highly enjoyable but challenging.