Becoming

excert from Becoming by Ben Haydn

“I remember the times we’d invest in
Our friendships, now it’s all about a friends list

We Double tap for conversation
Love a chat if it’s on Facebook
Trouble stacks and we don’t face it
We just type another status

They like it, we save it
They hate it, we erase it
We conform to the norm when we’re born to be brave”

 

Credits:
Written and Performed by Ben Haydn
Directed and Edited by Jonah Geh

Poet: Ben is a rapper and spoken word poet currently part of a band called SoulBox. He regularly tours around schools and youth groups talking about the issue of self image through his music and testimony.

Filmmaker: Jonah is a 20 year old filmmaker currently working for a Christian charity called The Message Trust. Jonah is passionate about using his videos to convey deep messages and competing stories, aiming to affect the view in a positive way.

The Filming Process:
The basic idea behind the video was to go into the Manchester city centre and find real people to film. We wanted to visually represent a large crowd of people existing in the same space, but not necessarily connecting with one another.

The decision to use handheld shots rather than using tripods and other grips came from both the practicality of needing to move around freely and quickly while on the street. As well as from a stylistic point of wanting to portray the sense of uneasiness and rawness. We decided to use unconventional composition techniques for the majority of the shots, such as framing Ben with very little leading room and a lot of negative space to portray the feeling of disconnection and again unease.

We decided to use diegetic sound in the video, such as street noise and cars, instead of a music track to firstly convey a sense of the place, but also to evoke a feeling of busyness. The headshots of the different people was used to symbolise a connection with different people. Some of the people featured we actually got talking to them about the subject of the video, and we got to find out their stories. We also coincidentally ran into one of Ben’s friends and got to use him to show a connection between two people.

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