Lights, camera, action!

Grant videoing one of the babies

As part of my job I got to do an interview today with a woman who runs a place of safety in the south of Pretoria. Not knowing a boom from a gaffer,  a redhead from a blonde, I asked my friends Grant and Wendy (who run their own audio/visual production company Waterston Entertainment) to help out…

Well, I thought it would be a quick little half-hour shoot, and that the majority of the time would be spent editing, but with these experts, who like to do things “right”, there were multiple takes of the same scene – wides, mids, close-ups, over-the-shoulder shots … It was amazing. I just stood marvelling at true genius.

And rather than them helping me out they did the majority of the work, leaving me to just take a few stills. In the end it was virtually impossible to drag Wendy away from the little kids. In her words: “It was heart-wrenching seeing the special little kids – especially the 11-day-old baby who had been abandoned just after birth. You cannot believe that people can find it in themselves to give their children away.”

The woman who runs the place of safety in her own home is sixty years old and single. She’s given her life for these children. She pours her heart and love into every single one that comes through her doors. She now fosters six of the older children (all of whom call her ‘mom’), and looks after the babies until they can be adopted. With little help from the government, Nikon and a few other companies help out financially.

But she’s the true heroine… If only there were more like her out there…

Grant showing true commitment to capturing just the right shot... Dirty work indeed.

Grant setting up an angle. Everything was shot on Nikon D7000 and Nikon D3s SLRs

About these ads