Brexit Strategy Production

Brexit strategy is a short documentary we co-produced super quickly in the aftermath of the 2016 EU Referendum. We came on board to co-produce as well as crew and provide kit for the 4 day shoot. Counterstate Films frequent collaborator, the director/producer/journalist Elizabeth Mizon had a fast idea just days after the EU ref result to make a short documentary analysing the reasons for voting, from a cross section of (Bristol) society.

The key was not only producing a detailed and balanced film, but creating, researching, shooting, editing and releasing it in 5 days – it was key that this came out during the immediate public conversation that engaged so many happy/scared/angry people in the weeks following the result. This meant vigorous discussion to identify the core purpose of the film, what Elizabeth was trying to say and how she was saying it – who would be interviewed and what political position do they take on this and a variety of other factors influencing their vote. Then we set about with producing locations, interviewees and kit as well as making sure we were on hand to attend and film the various protests and events that took place over the week.

It was great to come on board and assist Elizabeth’s vision for both the purpose of the film and also the look of the interviews. This wasn’t supposed to be a news report or be a vox pop on a range of issues – the intention was to produce a film that took a more detailed look into the political positions and give them the social, political and personal context.

We also helped with some of the moments of animation in the film – animating twitter updates and social media conversations as well as creating an animated graph to represent voting data. Elizabeth was a great collaborator, working incredibly hard on the edit in the moments between shooting interviews and filming other material.