UKC

Now that I've got your attention, may I first thank everybody who has given me advice over the last month on how to create a home-made documentary. Hopefully I've taken much of this advice on board.

And as for the content of the little movie, I would appreciate any advice or criticism on how I could improve for my following project planned for next week.

And if there are any ambulance, police, fire or Life Boat people out there, I would very much appreciate your advice too, about the movie or the Blue Lights Program in general.

Cheers
muchly

youtube.com/watch?v=0mfm5DwDDZA&

In reply to The Lemming:

Plays great until 2:32 then the picture freezes and the sound gets stuck (on my machine at least).

In reply to broken spectre:
I see what you mean. I shall sort it out when I get home.


That's a bit of a downer.


Cheers

In reply to The Lemming:

I thought it was very good if you meant to give the message that you shouldn't talk about your current mental health

In reply to The Lemming:

Ok here's my second attempt, uploaded from my phone

The quality is low but I shall try and get a better resolution from home

youtube.com/watch?v=A45oTA7sOhw&

In reply to The Lemming:
I'm not your target audience but I was pleased to see the movie. Only comment I'd make is that you don't focus on removing the stigma enough, but hopefully that is because the stigma has been lessened in the Emergency Services compared to some other areas of life.

I wish you well with the project.

In reply to The Lemming:

thumbs up. did you try cutting between different angles during the answers between the questions? Did you have more than one camera? What was it like if you did. Maybe try that next time if you didn't... It was a good setting, thought I did see someone moving in the background of one of the shots

I had a slight wobble about a month ago after attending a serious incident close to the beach I was at. I was not on duty and had gone from 'lifeguard' mode to 'dad' mode, and was happily playing with my kids at the beach. All my lifeguard 1st aid equipment (basic responder bag) had been packed away in the car. I turned up with a pair of gloves and that was it! I remember the feeling of helplessness as my wife got lost bringing the responder bag to where the incident was occurring. In the end we got through most of our O2 before the Ambulance crew arrived, and that was about all that I could do for the patient. Essentially the patient needed to be in a specialist trauma surgery setting. I was lucky to be able to talk through the incident immediately afterwards with my lifeguard manager and then a couple of days later. I also chatted with our head medical chap at HQ a few days after that. It all settled down after about a week, but watching the video just now did bring back some of the feelings I had at the time, but in a more muted way. I was grateful that about 2 weeks later I didn't stumble across the body that was being sought, as I delayed my early training session to give my son an extra croissant and by the time I arrived at the beach I did some tidying up instead.

I was aware of the Blue light programme and if the symptoms of sleeplessness, replaying the incident etc had continued I would have contacted them too..

In reply to The Lemming:
Well done for trying to take on a difficult subject.

My advice/ criticism would be that I didn't feel that the two guys featured where particularly representative of myself or most of my colleagues. Average starting age round where I work I would think is about 25-30 (so with prior life experience) and most staff have been in post for 10 to 25 years (a lot more time to become demoralised and a lot more exposure to incidents).

Also the video primarily focused on the impact of "Nasty" jobs and PTSD on Ambulance staff, whereas my feeling is that it is the day to day management bullsh*t, unrealistic public/patient expectations, and year-on-year grind of shifts work that have the greatest impact on mental health long term. Could these issues be addressed somehow.

From a personal point of view, in January/ february I had about a 6 to 7 week period without finishing a single shift on time, fighting of colds/ flu left right and centre, I then went to a RTC where we had 3 time critical patients (one died as I was trying to cannulate her whilst still trapped in the car, another died a month later and the third survived. It was cold, one of the patients was ejected into a boggy wet field, and so I was soaking wet through my trousers, and by the time we had got the two patients Anesthetised/ ventilated and off scene two hours had gone by and it was getting dark, and even colder. I went home cold, damp, covered in mud, exhausted, totally disillusioned, and LATE again. The next week when I got a cold that I would normally work through I just couldn't get up to go to work, for a few days I seriously contemplated quitting.

In reply to Dave B:


On the evening, I filmed with a camcorder and a gopro duct-taped to the back of a deckchair. The audio was done with a Rode steriomic duct-taped to an upside-down mug, and captured on my Nexus 5X phone. At the time something went squiffy with the sound on the camcorder meaning that I had zero sound from that device and unusable sound from my gopro. Somehow I managed to sync the audio from my phone. Thankfully I followed the advice of one of the contributors clapping on film. I could then sync up the spike of the clapping sound with the visual clapping on both cameras. Quality tip, that saved my bacon.

I have never filmed anything with two cameras before, let alone splice them together to get some sort of continuity. That was a learning curve. Next week I am filming a couple more colleagues and hope to learn some new techniques from YouTube-land before I publish my next masterpieces.

Thanks for your comments, they are much appreciated.

In reply to SAF:


Thanks. However I am hanging off the coat-tales of the actual chaps championing the cause.


You're quite right about the age thing and next week I will have a couple of old-timers willing to go on camera. Who knows how that will turn out, hopefully useful and helpful.


You're leaning against an open door here.


Before the advent of 111, we had time to decompress. But after the introduction, about three years ago, of 111, it was like a light switch being turned on where everybody went from a tolerable pace of life to full-on relentless working. Now it is the norm to do 7-8 hours before getting a chance to eat. And from waking up at 06-00 hours to eating at 14-00hrs or later does put a physical toll on us all.

And yes, its a pisser always having to finish way beyond end of shift. But that's probably why we are paid the big bucks.

And as for going off sick, there's always the First Stage and Second Stage sickness hearings waiting on your return. Surely that's got to motivate you ?

But then I worked behind a desk for 13 years, and found that considerably more stressful than my life on the road. All I ask is that I am fed and watered at a reasonable time and not one where most office workers have put in a full day's work and gone home before getting.

Seriously though, I really appreciate your comments and advice for my next couple of projects.

In reply to The Lemming:

Will have a look tomorrow matey, but not long home from a 12hr shift that turned into 14hrs with a bad job on a plane, compounded by incompetent airline staff. Fkn knackered, my students were put through the mill, and patient probably dead by now, will find out tomorrow. one of those shifts, you know the score

In reply to The Lemming:

Interesting little film there!

In reply to The Lemming:

This video has been removed by the user.

In reply to aln:

There was a problem initially however scroll down to 10:10 Friday for a working link.

Cheers

In reply to The Lemming:

I'll try again.

In reply to The Lemming:
One of the chaps, who I interviewed, had a go at creating a promotional video using the footage I took plus some copyrighted stuff he was given permission to use and his attempt blew mine out of the water.


youtube.com/watch?v=1lbATGVC_OY&

He said it was all put together on iMovie. Is that bit of apple software really that good?





And its a blatant shameless plug to promote Blue Lights for anybody on the forums that does that sort of work.