Reforms
importantly, silent, lecture hall where cameraman Iain Forsyth and I quickly rigged our portable set in time for our first visitors at midday. Once again, we’d had local
press coverage (and a radio interview over my iPhone while driving through Dundee which was a first for me!) so people came from far and wide. Celebrant Ron McLaren made the point that there’s no such thing as a Catholic child or a Muslim child, any more than there are Conservative or Socialist children, while university student Mhairi Hawkins had surprisingly positive things to say about the way religion had been taught in her school. In Aberdeen we had the luxury of being in a proper theatre rehearsal space, and being looked after by members of the local group. We met some great people and had two delightful surprises. The first was when we met Douglas, who was the only person who’d chosen to answer the question on same-sex marriage; if you haven’t already seen it, I don’t want to give away the ending, but his film could almost be a TV commercial in its own right. The second was more surprising. Andrea had come in to tell us what she thought was the most important human value, and she’d brought her friend Catriona for moral support.
While Andrea was signing “ We shot
more than 150 interviews and it took two days just to load them all up for the edit
her release form, I got chatting to Catriona and I can’t remember why, but she just happened to talk about her feelings on physician-assisted suicide, and although she said she had no intention whatsoever of going on camera, within minutes she’d agreed to be interviewed as well. Because the auditions were on working days, we began at midday and wrapped at 9.00 in Aberdeen, with the prospect of a two and a half hour drive to our B&B in Inverness ahead of us, fuelled only by cold pizza. It wasn’t made any more appealing when Lucy the Production Manager called its owners to say we’d be with them around midnight only to be told that in that case we’d have to find somewhere else to stay, as they weren’t a hotel. There’s nothing quite like Highland hospitality, is there? It was much more in
evidence at the Culcabock Hotel the next day, as the Highland group had turned out in force and we
interviewed both our oldest and youngest candidates. Ten
year old Mellin Buchanan in Thurso and 81 year old Margaret Ferguson from Inverness, both told us what Humanism means to them. Glasgow, being the second city of the Empire, was incredibly busy, but by now we were a well-oiled machine and shooting a new interview every fifteen minutes. While most people had already written their own scripts, more often than not they tended to be in written rather than spoken English. I was very glad that my colleagues, Marbeth Boyle and Linda Britton, were on hand to help the candidates turn their thoughts into speech and rehearse them until they felt entirely natural. At the end of the day, we’d shot more than 150 interviews and it took two days just to load them all up for the edit. Those of you who came to conference will have seen the longer versions of the nine films we made; if you weren’t there, you can now see the shorter versions we made for the internet, where two minutes is considered an epic. The next challenge will be making the TV commercial, watch this space. The H Factor isn’t over yet, and one way or another, we’ll be back with a whole new instalment right after this break!
. 7
www.humanism-scotland.org.uk
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