GREENPEACE DIRECTOR ED GILLESPIE ON HOPE IN A TIME OF CHAOTIC TRANSITION

I love Ed. Ed is a great guy. A great talker and a great activist, charming, smart, knowledgeable, funny, relaxed. He has made saving the Earth his career. Until one day, when it became apparent that there wasn’t going to be any saving getting done any time soon.

What he actually told me, on camera, with tears pricking his eyes, is that we’re GOING to get 1.5 degrees of global warming, that is a done deal. That was my first shock. The second one was that the science predicts actually nearer to somewhere between 3 and 4 degrees.

These little numbers, they mean so little to so many. It’s just a wee bit warmer, right? It just means our summer is a bit hotter, right?

Oh no. What it means is global sea level rise that will flood all major coastal cities across the globe, accelerating the melting not just of polar ice cap, an ongoing phenomenon, but of the vast Thwaites glacier, which will add another metre sea level rise to that already disastrous situation. And that is before we even begin to take into account the cataclysmic changes to our weather - the feedback loop of storms and droughts, of extremes in temperature, of crop failure and supply breakdown, of the mass internal and external migration of millions upon millions of people, of a human system so frail in the face of this calamity, there are no adequate words. We are looking at an absolute end to any of the comfort, protection or safety we may once have enjoyed. And when I say We, I mean even the deluded super-rich.

You’ve watched Don’t Look Up, right? Well this is what it is based on. Why they bothered to make an analogy with a meteor I don’t know, especially as Leonardo Di Caprio is such a green enthusiast. But they got the greenwashing and the media denial down straight.

What Ed tells us here, three years ago, is that there isnt any hope. One might have tried to think of this as giving up or cynical. But it aint. The science is the science, and three years into the twelve left to us to make changes before climate crisis becomes globally unstoppable and of course we have done nothing.

Oh, not nothing actually.

We have done one thing. We have signed away our children’s future.

adam rowleyNovember 24, 2019Comment

Mar 21, 2023

HOW MUCH DOES A CORPORATE VIDEO COST?

YOU KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY AND HOW YOU WANT TO SAY IT, BUT WHAT IS YOUR BUDGET?

How much will my film cost? Is inevitably our first question. The unhelpful answer is of course, how long is a piece of string? You may want a simple one-day, one-man shoot with a quick one-day edit, and you can probably get that for under a grand if you’re not too fussy and it really is just a one-day edit. Or you might want an ambitious creative concept, with lots of pre-production followed by a complex week-long shoot, filming on a RED camera, and lots of complicated compositing and animated graphics. And that could be £20 - £30 000. Or more.

Mar 20, 2023

WHY YOU HIRE A PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER

So here’s the cruel irony. Even though I know I possess the kind of staggering youthful good looks that make people catch their breath and drop their falafel when they meet me in real life, on camera I look like a laboratory experiment where the mad scientist has injected the DNA of Brendan Gleason and Charles Manson into a old potato

And being self-conscious - oh my crooked smile, oh my seventy-eight chins - means I forget that my delicious eyes are like limpid emerald pools you could drown in, and I project discomfort - In short, I don’t pose well. Maybe you do. Millions of others dont. And some of them work for you.

Mar 16, 2023

TESTIMONIAL VIDEOS, WHAT ARE THEY GOOD FOR?

WHY THE BEST WAY TO SELL YOUR PEOPLE IS TO USE YOUR PEOPLE

Back in the mists of time, every corporate video had an ambitious narrative, like a storyboarded long-form commercial, a piece of expensive, styled, authored creative in its own right. These films do still get made and they are great. I make them myself, though more usually I work in short form. Is this always how you want to disseminate your information, your brand, your company? Sometimes yes. Just as sometimes you want to Ronseal it, to say it like it is. But do you want to be that blunt? Again probably not.

WHY SPEND MONEY ON A PROFESSIONAL VIDEOGRAPHER?

WHAT VALUE DOES A PROFESSIONAL VIDEOGRAPHER ACTUALLY BRING TO THE PARTY?

Sure so this is where you get sold all the corporate and advertising cliches about brand identity and adding value to your message and blah blah blah. And you may not be thinking in those terms, but rather about just demonstrating something seemingly quite simple.

CAN ONE PERSON SHOOT PHOTOGRAPHY AND VIDEOGRAPHY AT AN EVENT?

YOU NEED A PHOTOGRAPHER , AND YOU ALSO WANT A CORPORATE VIDEOGRAPHER, BUT YOUR BUDGET PAYS FOR ONLY ONE OF THEM - WHAT DO YOU DO?

The short answer is of course some people can do both. The challenge is finding someone who is genuinely good at both, which is not as easy as it sounds. There are plenty of great photographers out there who can’t really shoot video. There are some good videographers out there, though they are no nearly so easy to find, and some of them are competent photographers too.

Mar 5, 2023

WHY EITHER EVERYONE OR NO ONE NEEDS TO WORRY ABOUT AI

With the announcement that China-based NetDragon Websoft says it is the first company in the world to appoint an AI as its CEO only to see stocks soar, naturally it isn’t just struggling bloggers and graphic designers who are worried about the implication of AI

This is where I’d like to reassure you that climate change ravaging the planet and making the lives of those few who survive the catastrophic flooding, wild fires and raging hurricanes that are predicted absolute hell.

GREENPEACE DIRECTOR ED GILLESPIE ON HOPE IN A TIME OF CHAOTIC TRANSITION

SHOWREEL

NEWS, TIPS, HACKS, ADVICE