‘More fool us’

“Using comedy to explore mental health issues? That’s crazy!” I hear you exclaim, fully aware of the bad pun.

That’s what I am working on with IJP for Southside Partnership, a mental health charity that works with a lot with ex-offenders and prisoners with severe mental health issues.The project is multi-faceted, combining a promotional film for Southside (completed late last year), a live performance by a comedian in Downview prison, plus a DVD of that performance intercut with “behind the scenes” footage, including interviews with comedian John Ryan and focus groups conducted at four Surrey prisons.

Thankfully, I have one of the easier jobs. I am creating a narrative, telling the story of John’s journey to find out about mental health issues in prisons. John, on the other hand, has to make it funny! I will be interested to see how he does that in the final performance. My guess is that he will focus on the absurdities of prison life – of which there are many – and tell some of the stories he has heard in focus groups about what prisoners do on a day-to-day level in order to get through their sentence. I’m expecting a bitter-sweet show.

Shooting inside prisons has a number of challenges, many of which we have faced so far on this project, and there may be more to come! The main challenge is getting permission to film inside a prison. Even for a company like Inside Job Productions, with a long track record of this kind of work, in addition to Southside, who go into prisons all the time, we have had stumbling blocks from prison bureaucracies in terms of gaining entry. Luckily a history of experience in how to negotiate such hurdles helps us navigate the many layers of management in a prison, ensuring we’re doing everything that we need to in order to secure the shoot.

The other element is the shoot itself, as one rarely has complete control over the location. Shooting schedules have to work around the prison schedules, there is limited time to prepare a room/location for filming and there is almost nothing you can do about the noise – a working prison is going to be noisy so you just have to accept it and hope you have a good sound recordist!

But with challenges come creative solutions. I find that, in all filmmaking, there are obstacles and blocks, people who tell you what you CAN’T do, which just makes you think more laterally about what you CAN do. Plan A on this project has already fallen through, so we’re on to Plan B and also have Plans C&D in reserve, just in case. However it happens, we’re going to make an interesting film.

Charlotte George, Producer/Director, Inside Job Productions