Our crew today was an all female team: Director – Debbie Howard, Producer – Polly Perkins, Director of Photography – Emma Dalesman and Sound Recordist – Heather Jordan.
The day was not without a few hiccups. Polly and Debbie were travelling from Sheffield and just before they entered the slip road for the M1 there was an accident and they closed the motorway. Due to bad diversion signs and everyone else leaving the motorway too, what should have been a 90 minute journey took 5 hours! During the journey they knew they wouldn’t make it in time to film Chris Heaton Harris who was arriving at midday.
Luckily, Emma was travelling by train from London and Heather was driving from Mansfield. Heather had all her sound kit, but the camera kit was in the car with Debbie and Polly. Due to some excellent team work, and thank goodness for smart phones, between them they were able to
organise the hire of a camera in Northampton, which Emma went to collect. Emma and Heather got to Michelle’s and filmed Chris Heaton Harris working with Michelle. Debbie and Polly made it just in time to do a quick interview with Chris before he had to leave. Polly then took back the hired camera and we resumed business as usual from that point, a little behind schedule but managed to get what we needed.
A big thanks to all the crew for stepping up and managing to get this sorted at the last minute, and to Emma Dalesman especially, for taking over on set until we got there!
It was consequently a very long day, but we got some great footage and it was well worth it.
Thanks to all the team, Michelle, Paul and Lulah and Chris Heaton Harris.On the 17th January we went to Northampton to film with Michelle Hemmington, her partner Paul Buckley and their daughter Lulah.
Michelle set up the Campaign for Safer Births and works tirelessly to change the laws around birth certificates for stillborn babies, wanting an actual birth certificate for them, and not a certificate of stillbirth. She also works hard to try and get independent inquests when a baby dies because of hospital negligence, as with Michelle and Paul’s son Louie. Michelle has been working with MP Chris Heaton Harris who is also keen to change the laws about birth certificates and often takes this to parliament, sometimes reading out Michelle’s words to try and further this cause. Chris came out to Michelle’s house yesterday and we filmed them together planning their next step of how they can implement these changes.