Sponsored Fallon, the line up looked amazing - Nitin Sawhney, Gilles Peterson, Charlie Dark, the London Philarmonic - we decided if we were going to do something it needed to to stand up alongside their talks.

 

 

The theme for the festival is about lifting the lid on the creative process - not just showing finished work and so we thought we should deliver something that illustrates the way we create, produce and deliver our projects at Bigballs, as well as giving the audience an opportunity to be involved from the ground up. It just so happened VSM were looking to collaborate with Kutiman - a man who’s made his name by remixing ordinary people’s videos on You Tube, and therefore providing them with a grander platform and voice. The partnership was a match made in heaven...

We hooked up up one of our young directors Pedro De La Fuente, who’d just delivered a great piece for Bench, with Kutiman and the ‘#Freedomis’ project was born.

 

Last Thursday, Pedro headed out with Matty Lambert, one of our sharpest young DOPs to Israel and Palestine, to create a unique documentary film with Kutiman and the help of a global audience. Utilising the twitter hashtag ‘#Freedomis’, we've sourced thoughts and opinions from around the world, and aggregated them at http://this-is-freedom.tumblr.com. At the same time Pedro, Matty and Kutiman have interviewed an eclectic mix of people in Tel Aviv and the West Bank… artists, politicians, students, shopkeepers and even a few important folk at Google's Israel HQ. The location has provided an evocative and emotive backdrop at the heart of a story about the meaning of freedom, at a time when this question is so relevant, both in the middle-east and indeed closer to home. 

The story of Pedro, Matty and Kutiman's journey and the crowdsourced elements will be presented on the 2nd September at the Vision Sound Music Festival, with the final film - which will combine story elements and documentary structure with Kutiman's remixing talents, released soon after.

Richard Welsh is the Creative Director at Bigballs Films.

Read Richard Welsh's take on the future of television.