Our team member, Jen, first met Barat during a photography lecture about his photo series, “The Dancing Boys of Aghanistan“, the work which brought his life into danger and thus an agent to his succeeding series, “The Unseen Road to Asylum“.  She had introduced him as a potential subject for her individual presentation before Khalidah and I jumped on board to present this pitch!

We decided to focus on the latter series, using it as the “skeleton” of our doco story and visuals. Imagine his photos as an anchor point while all other narrative elements are purposefully placed to enhance his work, bringing his visual story to life with his storytelling, camera movement and sound effects.

Being a professional photojournalist, his work alone serves as an excellent documentary of asylum-seekers’ perilous journey. Such an important issue deserves to be told with respect; we wanted to allow his voice and photos to lead the story.

We thought about the different visual “layers” we could possibly incorporate and rearrange: Barat’s photos, video interview of him, cutaways, and digital text on-screen.

To aid recall and ensure both interviewer and interviewee are on the same page, we decided to print relevant photos which Barat will physically engage with while communicating his past experiences.

The couple of videos above provide a general idea about the nature of the sound effects (geddit geddit) we want for the accompanying soundscapes.

The couple of videos above provide a general idea about the style and format we want our doco to have.