Documentary Unit - Meeting with the Contributors

During our shoot, we met up with a number of contributors, including Phil Haynes, a local wildlife photographer, Gareth Fulton, the site manager at Elmley, Nick May, the site manager at Great Bells and Rob Peck, one of the campaigners against the wind turbines. Each provided their own pieces of information, whether it be about the wildlife, the turbines or the local area, and we used this information to help build on the script and develop the documentary.

Nick May was the first person we met up with when we were doing our first location recce around Great Bells Farm. He is the site manager of the farm and works alongside the RSPB. We only spoke to Nick briefly but he gave us a great starting point on our script and gave us a lot of useful information about the turbines that we did not know previously. It was rather difficult gaining permission to film at the site however as we had to go through the RSPB communications officer, Martin Jensen to do so.

The next contributor we met with was Gareth Fulton, the site manager of Elmley Nature Reserve. Gareth was especially helpful, giving us a lift round the site and giving us a large amount of information about the local wildlife and about the site. It was a shame we couldn't get an interview with him as he seemed very passionate about the subject, but work commitments got in the way of an interview.

We met up with Phil Haynes at Great Bells Farm during our last shoot. We had a brief chat about the turbines and how they affect the local wildlife before he offered to take us around the farm and show us the best places to get shots of the birds. Up until this point, we struggled to even find let alone get a shot at a Marsh Harrier and with his help we managed to find and film multiple Marsh Harriers. Phil also got us in contact with Rob Peck.

And finally we met with Rob Peck, who we was recommended to speak to by both Nick May and Phil Haynes. Though we were able to get an interview with him, it did not fit with the documentary as well as we hoped meaning we didn't go through with it in the end. However the meeting we had with him was very useful, I felt that we learned more about the turbines in that one meeting than we did through our own research and the other meetings put together. I was hoping he too was passionate about bird watching like the three mentioned previously, that way we might have been able to link the interview we filmed with the documentary.