A Trouble Shared

Commissioned by the Warrington NHS Mental Health Promotion team, this is a ten-minute drama followed by key information, to portray the effects of depression in the elderly and offer solutions to help the older community and their relatives.

Accessibility Version

I was also asked to record a voice-over reading of the factual information, so that there would be a version of the film accessible to people with visual impairment. Since I’d written the main script, I decided it would be a useful (and fairly straight forward) addition to create an audio description of the main action in the film as well.

Jane Standing’s voice adds a level of power to the information screens that is hard to beat on such a low-budget production. She’s open to offers for other work if anyone who watches this would like to capitalise on her talent.

To watch and hear the audio-described version, please follow this link.

Cast/Crew

Albert – Bert Rigby
Vera – Margaret O’Kell
Janice - Sue Ellison
Script - Cécile Marchant and Myles Winstone
Director – Cécile Marchant
Camera – Lee Harman
Editor – Kevin Marchant

A Bit of Background

In June 2007, I found out that the Big Idea team were looking for scriptwriters for a project to produce videos that would help communicate key information to the elderly community in Warrington.

As a group we identified seven areas of value and each volunteer scriptwriter was asked to choose a topic. Myles was interested in the “emotional wellbeing” topic and I was keen to write in collaboration. So we teamed up.

Myles and I spent a number of weeks researching the subject, with kind contributions coming from many sources, including my contacts at Age Concern.

We were given a rather dry and very outdated video (starring John Cleese) to see the sort of thing that was in the public domain. And naturally we decided that we could do better!

We developed the core of the script in about 4 hours – and I’m grateful to Myles for the spark of humour he helped to introduce. I’m quite a serious person by nature, so comedy doesn’t come to mind as the first thing when I’m writing, but as we bounced ideas around I found one or two phrases creeping in – and they’ve raised the odd smile from the people who’ve subsequently watched the film.

I was keen to gain experience directing and was delighted to find such a “depressed” Albert in Bert. (And yes, the names of the actors were totally coincidental - not only did Bert play Albert, but his sidekick, Vera is played by Margaret - and Albert’s late wife was called Margaret.)

Lee Harman did some sterling work on camera and came up with a few interesting ideas for shots that I might have otherwise missed. So everyone learned and gained from the experience.

Microfold (my company) created a special DVD, with subtitles and options, that would make the DVD accessible to people with both visual and audio impairment and then sourced and project managed the production of 250 copies.

This part of the Healthy Ageing project was mainly driven by the Warrington NHS Mental Health Promotion team, who used the DVD in conjunction with Social Services in a pilot that ran during Summer 2008, to assess and promote awareness of depression in older people.

The film proved a great success and they now plan to include it in their training programmes, so hopefully it will continue to prove a useful tool in raising awareness of this horrible illness.

As a bonus, the film was screened as part of the “One in Four” film festival at UCLAN, in October 2008 and was well received.