Documentary

March 2013
This World: America’s Poor Kids
BBC2
Director: Jezza Neuman
Truevision Films
JPM: Composition

In the United States, child poverty has reached record levels, with over 16 million children now affected. Food banks are facing unprecedented demand, and homeless shelters now have long waiting lists, as families who have known a much better life sometimes have to leave their homes with just a few days notice. This World asks three children whose families are struggling to get by to explain what life in modern America really looks like through their eyes. Told from the point of view of the children themselves, this one-hour documentary offers a unique perspective on the nation’s flagging economy and the impact of unemployment, foreclosure and financial distress as seen through the eyes of the children affected.

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November 2012
Granta
A.M. Homes in London for publication of May We Be Forgiven
The Film Atelier
Director: Stephanie Pouchet
Editor: Lee McKarkiel
JPM: Library Music

Published on Nov 9, 2012
In autumn 2012 A.M. Homes visited London to promote her acclaimed new novel, ‘May We Be Forgiven’. Through the week of her visit she was followed by film producers ‘The Film Atelier’ – the resulting film is both a revealing insight into this new novel and an intimate portrait of Homes’ wider career and creative approach.

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October 2012:
Nick Poyntz: Golden Oldies
True Vision Films
JPM: Dubbing Mix

This affectionate insight into being old today sees three Golden Oldies pass on their astute and humorous insights on becoming old and poor, and the stark choices they now face in their twilight years. Full of wisdom, independent spirit and hard-earned perspective, their stories make you ask, ‘Could this happen to me?’

Doris is 84, and won’t let a living soul (including the film-maker) inside her chaotic Clacton home – for fear that social services will take it away from her.

Feisty Kitty in Exeter is also 84. She shows us her Kate Moss-inspired knicker and bra collection, and dreams of a miracle cure to an illness like most dream of winning the lottery.

And then there’s relatively youthful and charismatic Frank from Liverpool, who at 72 has lost his family to emigration. With no-one left, he has lost the will to carry on – but not his intelligence or tragic humour. Self-imprisoned in his own home like a character from a Samuel Beckett play, his neighbours rarely see him. He hasn’t had a bath in years – mainly because he doesn’t have one. He’s reminiscent of an older, helpless Boo Radley from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

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May 2012:
UK Uncut: The Missing Billions
Small Axe Films
JPM: Sound and Music

The missing billions | UK Uncut from Small Axe Films on Vimeo.

A film about the impact of the cuts in the UK, and the alternative. The film centers on the court case being brought by UK Uncut Legal Action against HMRC over a tax deal done between the revenue and Goldman Sachs in 2010 that saw £20m wiped off the a banking giants tax bill.

If you would like to support this film, and the legal action campaign, then please visit:
ukuncutlegalaction.org.uk
Donations are greatly appreciated.
You can also order hard copy DVDs from the website.

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April 2011:
Poor Kids
Director: Jezza Neuman
Broadcast Best Documentary Nominee – in 2012
Learning on Screen Nominee – in 2012
Televisual Bulldog Best Documentary Nominee – in 2012
Chicago Film Festival Gold Plaque for Social & Political Documentary – in 2012
JPM: Music Arrangement and Production

Apart from raising awareness on this great film, I’d like to also say this was the fastest job I’ve ever done, and probably will ever do
“Documentary telling the stories of some of the 3.5 million children living in poverty in the UK. It is one of the worst child poverty rates in the industrialised world, and successive governments continue to struggle to bring it into line. So who are these children, and where are they living? Under-represented, under-nourished and often under the radar, 3.5 million children should be given a voice. And this powerful film does just that.

Eight-year-old Courtney, 10-year-old Paige and 11-year-old Sam live in different parts of the UK. Breathtakingly honest and eloquent, they give testament to how having no money affects their lives: lack of food, being bullied and having nowhere to play. The children might be indignant about their situation now, but this may not be enough to help them. Their thoughts on their futures are sobering.

Sam’s 16-year-old sister Kayleigh puts it all into context, as she tells how the effects of poverty led her to take extreme measures to try and escape it all.

Poor Kids puts the children on centre stage, and they command it with honesty and directness. It’s time for everyone to listen.

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March 2011:
Just Do It
Director: Emily James
JPM: Music Supervision.

Just Do It is the upcoming feature documentary by acclaimed filmmaker Emily James offering a behind the scenes portrait of UK climate activists. The individuals in the film have picked up the mantle of civil disobedience and direct action – chaining themselves to Parliament, super-gluing themselves to bank trading floors, and attacking coal power stations en-mass.
More to come I’m sure about this wonderful, crowd funded film I’m sure, for now I just wanted to say how much fun I had with this lovely team
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November 2010:
“A Life in a Day” Trailer
Director: Joon Goh
JPM: Music Composition (edit)

Yup really happy that Kevin MacDonald, director of “The Last King of Scotland” and “Touching the Void” has heard our music and likes it!! Ridley Scott also MIGHT have!! Whoo hoo! We teamed up with director Joon Goh to create a trailer for this great idea, thousands of people send in videos of a day in their lives to be put together in one massive world social commentary. Like. Music by Matthew Herbert. Double like.
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September 2010:
Paths Through Utopias
Director: John Jordan, Isabelle Fremeaux
JPM: Sound Mix

“Paths Through Utopias takes us on a 6 month journey through Europe in search of ways of living despite capitalism. Out of the journey a book and film have been made to highlight communities that have opted out of a society obsessed with profit and consumption. Paths through Utopias is an exploration of projects which offer, in their own ways, large or small, modest or ambitious, recent or old, a range of alternatives to the capitalist system.

All over Europe a multitude of small-scale long term experiments see the making of the future in the present as the most constructive act of resistance. And given the precarious state of the world’s life support systems, these alternatives are also attempts to build lifeboats for the choppy ride ahead. By attenuating their ecological footprint, by using renewable energies, reducing dependence on destructive agriculture and supermarkets by producing their own food, addressing issues of power through non-hierarchical social relationships, these projects are striking evidence that living otherwise, outside the dictatorship of consumerism, competitivity and ecological destruction, can take many forms which are very different from commonly spread stereotypes and can be beautiful, viable and fulfilling”.

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June 2010:
Danielle Lineker: My New Family
Director: Katy Sheppard
Music supervision and composition

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March 2010:
Karl Max Way:
Directors: Mauricio Osaki & Flavia Guerra

Directors Flavia Guerra and Mauricio Osaki have scored an Honorable Mention at ‘It`s All True’ Film Festival in Brazil, for their film “Karl Max Way” – a portrait of a Brazilian ‘motoboy’ (motorcycle courier) working in London.
The festival organisers told Flavia that they invented this prize  especially for her film this year because ‘they couldn’t help giving a prize for a film that reveals so well the Brazilian and the English  soul and reality in the same story’.

This is a fly on-the-wall documentary following Karl Max – a representative of the thousands of immigrants in the UK. Although being named after Karl Marx by his Socialist mother, he is most definitely capitalist – his attitude reminds me funnily enough of Boxer in the novel ‘Animal Farm’ – “I will work harder”.

I had free reign to compose what I wanted and obviously I had to experiment a bit with the sound of motorbikes. The result was weird but really well received by the directors.
May 2010:

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February 2010:
Banking On Change
Winner of the BRITDOC/Co-operative Competition
Director: Andrew Hinton
Pilgrim Films
JPM: Music Composition

First time working with director Andrew Hinton with great results. The film has been seen by over 24,000 people on youtube and has won a Britdocs award at the time of writing. It’s a really positive, moving film.
“J.S Parthibhan is a bank manager with a difference: hes interested in people, not numbers. Through micro loans, he helps villagers in rural areas develop a sense of entrepreneurship and self-respect.
Travelling on his moped to isolated villages, Parthibhan has made it his mission to bring his bank to the people, not the other way around. For him, reforming the system should happen at the most basic level: face to face. “It is about more than just dealing with money. It is dealing with people, with their aspirations.” These villagers need a loan for a new kiln. He educates them about money and talks them through the process of opening an account. “If I were a doctor I would care for the people coming to me the same way as I do now.” In the past years, he’s successfully backed countless similar ventures: “You can talk about financial crisis, but the importance is cultivating people. If you do that, everything falls in to the right place”. Now heres a role model for bankers from Wall Street to Tokyo.” – Journeyman Pictures

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January 2010:
The Rat
Director: Mario Giamra
JPM: Sound Design and Sound Mix

The Rat is a human rights film based on the true story of a Lebanese prisoner of conscience detained in a Syrian prison. Recounting the relationship that grew between the captive and the rat that inhabited his cell, the film is a humanistic polemic against dictatorships and autocratic regimes that persist around the world, and strongly criticizes the concept of imprisoning people for peacefully expressing their beliefs.

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December 2009:
Young Carers: 3 Minute Wonder
Director: Katy Sheppard
JPM: Music Library Usage

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November 2009:
Brought Up By Booze: A Children In Need Special
Director: Katy Sheppard
Truevision Films
JPM: Music Composition

Bespoke music, licensed content from production library and music supervision.

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March 2009:
Music for “Dangerous Love – A Comic Relief Special”
Director: Katy Sheppard
Truevision Films
JPM: Music Composition

Exposé on domestic violence in the UK, and hosted by Danielle Lloyd, herself a victim of horrendous domestic violence.

Samples taken from key moments in the film – mostly sounds from Danielle herself and other victims of domestic violence – to create parts of the soundtrack.

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May 2008:
The Deadline
Director: Phil Stebbing
Winner: Best Independent Film 32nd International Wildlife Film Festival
JPM: Music Composition

A high seas drama documented by director Phil Stebbing. Travelling aboard a Greenpeace ship along the West Coast of Africa, The Deadline unravels a multi billion dollar pirate fishing scam. Hidden far out at sea and without surveillance, fish are caught by unhygienic unlicensed rusting trawlers. This catch is then smuggled back to port for Westerner’s dinner plates with no-one the wiser that it has been stolen from the poorest people on the planet.

http://www.facebook.com/TheDeadlinefilm

download the whole film at http://vodo.net/thedeadline
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March 2008:
Rageh Omaar: The Iraq War By Numbers
Director: Nick Read
Editor: Dana Trometer
Mentorn Films
JPM: Music Composition

This documentary marks the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Rageh Omaar returns to the country to discover the human stories behind the vast number of statistics generated in five years of conflict. The programme uses archive footage and eye-witness accounts to illustrate the effects of the war on civilians and military, participants and observers, Iraqis and non-Iraqis.

The music for this piece took 3 drafts to get right – getting simpler and simpler each time. eventually the music took shape in a somber and sparse recording on grand piano. The style was a mix between classical and arabic, using a light eq set to make the piano sound reminiscent of an iraqi Santour – a traditional stringed instrument struck by hammers.

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September 2007:
I4I:
Director: Katy Sheppard
Truevision Films
JPM: Music Composition

This series of six short films looked at the theme of revenge in youth gangs. This production was special in the sense that the director AJ was only 17 and a product of the very environment he was trying to document.

After one day in the studio AJ became the voice of the first soundtrack. He proved to have lyrics and vocals that perfectly matched the intention of the films, and eventually featured on 5 of the 6 submitted to Channel Four.

Later on that evening, we decided to take sound recordings and pictures on location in (omitted), and there was one of the strangest moments of our lives when we scared an old lady half to death kicking benches and bins in the heart of one of London’s roughest estates.

We walked her home, AJ in tears. The sound of her telling her story, of our feet swishing through the leaves on the ground, the sound of our director thumping his fist into his palm and the tube on the jubilee line all eventually became features in the soundtracks.

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