A Bafta winning film maker will be hosting a 'unique' workshop where he will film, edit and finish a documentary on climate change in just one hour.
Filmmaker and comedian Duncan Cowles will be performing at this year’s Glasgow Youth Film Festival, and he has created a one-of-a-kind show which will rely on audience interaction to be complete.
In the hybrid workshop/show, Duncan will be interacting with his audience in an impressive one-hour time-frame, using their ideas and stories to film, edit and produce a one hour documentary.
The focus of the weekends on-the-spot doc will be climate change, as Duncan thinks it is an appropriate topic with Glasgow hosting COP26 in November. However, just because he has a theme in mind, it doesn’t mean that the audience can’t let loose with their imagination.
He said: “I’m going to aim it around climate change so that there's a little bit of a focus and a theme. But beyond that we might interview someone from the audience with an interesting story or we might get stock footage from the internet and see where the audience want to take it.
“It will be truly unique, whatever happens.”
With crowd interaction and participation being such a crucial aspect to the event, the filmmaker could be in for an even more 'unique' night if the audience fail to assist in providing content.
He joked: "If the audience says nothing, I'm in a lot of trouble”
However, the Edinburgh man is up for the challenge, with a similar idea working well previously for a show in Birmingham a few years back.
Since then, he has filmed and created numerous short films and has picked up a Scottish BAFTA for his work on the 2016's ‘Isabella’, and won the Scottish Short Film Award for 'Directed by Tweedie.
Although admitting the documentary created this weekend will probably not be a masterpiece, the former Edinburgh College of Art student hopes it will aim to show a younger generation of filmmakers and enthusiasts how to get involved.
He said: “I always enjoy doing workshops with kids, young filmmakers, and students so I try do that whenever I’m offered the opportunity.
“I think it is important, as I benefited from people like me when I was younger that showed stuff like this. So, I think it is almost my way of giving back that experience.
“It is always good fun, and usually I learn as much from them as they learn from me.”
Lockdown was quite a “stressful time” for the creative industry, but Duncan proved exception, landing his longest ever project - BBC series 'Scary Adult Things'.
Scottish internet sensations, and many of the country’s hidden gems and interesting people were interviewed in the process of the six episodes where he set out to ask the question about adult life ‘am I doing this right?’.
Now with the series finished, Duncan is working on his first ever feature length documentary.
He told The Herald: “I’ve helped others in their own feature length films in various roles, but this will be the first big one myself.
“It is about my own difficulties about me opening up and showing emotion around my family. So, it is a very personal film.
“In a similar way to the series, I go and meet other people as part of the journey, but I meet them more than once over a long period of time.
“It’s been a hard film to make because of the subject matter, and I almost avoided doing it because it has been hard.
“For that reason, the making of the film has become very much part of the full story hopefully people will enjoy that when it is finished. “
Tickets for this Sundays show can be secured for free on the Glasgow Film theatre website
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here