Jeanie Finlay
Jeanie is a British artist and filmmaker who creates intimate, funny and personal documentary films and artworks. Her focus is on creating compelling portraits and is obsessed with telling other people’s stories. Her work is known for its innovative approach to engaging with audiences in meaningful ways. (Read more)
Homemaker
Home-Maker is an award winning interactive documentary by Jeanie Finlay.
Home-Maker is the result of two residencies which took place in the living rooms of seven housebound, older people in South Derbyshire and Tokyo. Jeanie Finlay spent time with each of the seven people, getting to know their histories, preoccupations and passions, creating video and panoramic portraits of them in their homes.
Home-Maker was presented as an interactive domestic installation as part of a UK tour, the portraits were projected as life-size digital environments recreated in typical Derbyshire and Tokyo living rooms.
Orion
I AM ORION is a Future Documentary Sandbox project funded by the REACT Knowledge Exchange Hub for the Creative Economy. REACT is a collaboration led by UWE Bristol (the University of the West of England), Watershed and the Universities of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The film screens as a documentary film for Cinema and Video on Demand.
The team describe it as “a ‘wraparound’ project, a term which we have come up with to offer an innovative model for 21st century filmmaking.”
In her report about the project, Dr Judith Aston says ‘‘I Am Orion’ is a documentary based project which is harnessing web technologies to reach out to fans, gather their memories and elicit participation in the telling and sharing of a rich and fascinating story.’ …. ‘‘Wraparound filmmaking’ is a new term, chosen by Jeanie and myself to reflect our innovative approach and is a key outcome of the REACT Sandbox process. Central to this approach is the concept of filmmaking with extended content, and the application of audience research to create new possibilities for participation in the making and viewing of the film. We want to make cinema going a memorable live event and to find ways to build audience engagement from pre-production right through to distribution. In so doing, we want audiences to become invested in the story by allowing them to make their own creative interventions, whether by advising on subject matter and story, by sourcing and creating content, or by participating in events around the film’s screening.”
‘In coming up with this term, we fully acknowledge that it sits within or alongside related concepts, in particular Henry Jenkins’ thinking around transmedia storytelling’…
‘Here’s a definition of transmedia storytelling from Henry Jenkins: telling a story or experience across multiple platforms and formats ... the purpose being not only to reach a wider audience but to expand the narrative itself.
And here’s our definition of wraparound filmmaking: moving beyond the creation of story extensions which sit alongside a film towards creating interventions which are integral to the mechanics of the film’s actual making and viewing.’
Sound it Out
SOUND IT OUT (75 mins) is a documentary portrait of the very last surviving vinyl record shop in Teesside, North East England. A cultural haven in one of the most deprived areas in the UK, SOUND IT OUT documents a place that is thriving against the odds and the local community that keeps it alive. Directed by Jeanie Finlay who grew up three miles from the shop.