Filming of Extinction Rebellion
As a conscientious filmmaker, I enjoy documenting reality and filming events that are important to me. To highlight the great work of Extinction Rebellion ( known as XR) and their fight against climate change I’ve filmed several of their recent protests in London.
Extinction Rebellion People’s Assembly
This video shows the first 90 minutes of the People’s Assembly event held at Marble Arch in London. My idea was to film the entire stage presentation so that people who were unable to attend could then watch and hear all the good representatives of Extinction Rebellion in action and their reception by an enthusiastic audience. There have been many film crews from organisations worldwide following XR’s protests and arrests at a number of locations in Central London. However, as a professional filmmaker, I thought it would be interesting for many people to observe the full and unedited version of this particular event rather than short edited snippets selected by editors for their news programmes or being shown on social media. My hope is that this video will act both as a historical record of the speakers at this event and as a resource to help XR communicate their message to a wider audience.
What is a People’s Assembly?
To help everyone understand what a People’s Assembly is I thought it would help to explain the concept.
Extinction Rebellion lists People’s Assemblies on their Beyond Politics leaflet as: “a group of self-selecting people who come together in an assembly, often in occupied spaces as part of a movement towards revolutionary change. The aim of the PA’s can be to make decisions, discuss issues or rapidly organise. The people’s assembly uses participatory democracy, that is, everyone’s voice is heard and no voices lead. The aim is for the collective voice of the entire assembly to become involved in arriving at a decision. Trained facilitators are used to support the process. People will find that even though they have come to the issue with their own strongly held ideas and thinking, they will have their mind completely changed through the deeper knowledge and wider perspective gained through the process”
Documenting events
My film documenting the reality of Extinction Rebellion was filmed on Monday 22nd April 2019 at Speakers Corner Marble Arch. After filming the event, I then processed the 4K media and encoded it to ProRes 422 for uploading to my Vimeo channel and made this 90-minute film was available to view the next day. This film is now available to share or embed on other websites.
I hope that much more can be achieved much more quickly to counter the effects of climate change following the amazing work by Extinction Rebellion.
