They say a week is a long time in politics. Sometimes it seems like aeons ago, especially when social media debates move on apace. It often depends on what’s happened in between time!
As you may have gathered, we worked very hard to get our video footage of last week’s hustings ready. It can still be found here.
It finally got loaded on YouTube around 3am on Saturday morning but by then Merton TV had posted their footage online about 30 hours earlier on the Thursday evening. In the spirit of openness and given some of the social media that got attached to Merton TV’s posting we have decided it would be useful to explain how we ended up having two different recordings of the same event and some tough lessons that we have learnt along the way.
When we were planning the hustings, we started to explore the idea of filming the event and livestreaming it / posting it online. Other than our short video stories and some zoom events during lockdown Wimblecomm had never looked at filming something 2 hours long before so that was a major challenge alongside the live event itself given particularly two of our team, Natalie and Karl, who both know a thing or two about this, weren’t free last Monday evening. Other than Natalie it is worth emphasising that we are otherwise all volunteers, as trustees!
We contacted two organisations Crown Lane Studios and Merton TV about bids for filming it about two weeks before. Both promised to email us and nothing emerged, so we ended up borrowing Natalie’s own video camera and tripod which she kindly leant to us on 20 June. Later that day, Crown Lane contacted us, but their quote was more than we could afford. John Merriman did kindly provide some back up audio equipment, but we stuck to Natalie’s camera for filming. We decided ourselves not to go with livestreaming as it seemed too much to organise as well.
On the night we were therefore very surprised when Mark Gale from Merton TV turned up with his equipment before 7pm as we were setting up. Mark offered to film it as well at no cost which was appreciated given our limited technical skills and his experience, but I confirmed that as we had by then said it would not be livestreamed, we would just film it. His presence did cause a bit of consternation with some of the candidates, but Mark promised me he would show us his footage before putting it online which he did and which we later shared with the candidates before it was put in public mode. Obviously, we had hoped to put ours up at the same time, but it wasn’t possible.
On Friday last week we were therefore concerned to see the social media message that Mark had attached to his video claiming that two candidates wanted it blocked and that they had also stopped it being livestreamed. This is not accurate. It is true our version is around 10 minutes shorter than his but that is simply because our camera cut off after every 25 minutes or so (this was missed by our operator on one question at the beginning in particular). That was the only editorial change. A full list of the missing bits is included in the footnote below.*
Many organisations and individuals presenting on both media and social media often include a headline to draw you in – even when that headline is misleading. How often have you clicked on a link to see the actual story is nowhere near as exciting as it suggests?!
It is one of the reasons I am wary of all forms of media but obviously getting someone to sit through a full 2 hours of any recording will often be a challenge! I’m posting this blog before election day as I feel it’s important to have that information before you vote. But I suspect I will be returning to this theme again in future! In the meantime please do use your vote.
*Differences from Merton TV version: 1. Reduced introduction by David. 2. Omission of answer on vegetarianism (as several candidates were missed). 3. Part answers only by Ben / Paul on housing. 4. Part answer only by Amy on the economy. 5. End of Sarah’s summary missed off.