Today marked the start of something more than exciting for me. Last week, Live Life Then Give Life invested in a new media production package of professional equipment with which to document all the activities we’re involved in, as well a creating short films and videos to play at events and talks being given by any of the trustees or advocates.
Today one of our advocates, the irrepressable Nelly Shah, orgnised one of the 108 World’s Biggest Walks that took place at the same exact time (12noon GMT) in 18 countries over 5 continents. Emily and I headed down (well, she came up) to Stanmore in Middlesex (just off J4 of the M1) to join her and her family on their 5km walk around Stanmore and Edgeware to raise awareness of organ donation and the chronic shortage of donors, particularly in the black and Asian communities. Nelly, who’s originally from Kenya, has now been waiting for five-and-a-half years simply because of the dificulty of matching her tissue type with such a small pool of donors.
I took our equipment down and shot my first professional documentary pieces, as well as several interviews, which will go into an awareness-raising, high-impact video package for a talk Emily’s giving next weekend to an audience of over 2000 people from the Tamil community.
It was unbelievably exciting and I’m so amazingly pleased to have been given the opportunity to do this by the guys at Live Life Then Give Life who have placed an enormous amount of trust in me to deliver high-quality product to help the charity achieve its objects.
Of course, that’s only half the task, I now have to assemble the footage into usable pieces – one for the website to promote the walk and one, longer, piece for the talk DVD, which will also include an interview with two parents who have recently lost their 15-month-old son for want of a liver and small bowel.
It has to be said that I do feel a certain amount of pressure to deliver now, as it was me who spent a lot of time and energy researching the equipment and talking to the other trustees about the benefits and pluses of investing in the camera and sound package. But, to be honest, I’m actually quite enjoying the pressure as it’s been a while since I actually had any pressure on me to achieve anything at all, so it’s nice to have a target.