All Rivers Great and Small started out as a ‘let’s take three or four people for a walk along the riverbank and film what happens’ project. Simple enough idea you might think, but initially it didn’t convey the idea of it being friends on a walk. More like a bunch of strangers wondering what to say next. Similar programmes use celebrities but once you do that, you make it more about the celebrity and less about the locations, where as I wanted this to be more about the location with LOCAL REAL people simply being the guides along the way.
“A virtual walk with really good friends, enjoying the scenery and learning new things as they go”
After much thought and trial and error I used people with strong personalities but differing backgrounds. In other words people who would never normally be in one another’s social circles. It resulted in a fair bit of talking over each other, but in the end it settled down and resulted in what I was looking for “people just being themselves”, but with an opinion all their own!
The message I wanted to put across was,
“How the character of Yorkshire men and women has been shaped by the land and how they in turn have influenced the landscape”
This was achieved in a number of ways
- The explorers and their interactions with the landscape and each other.
- The scenery
- Places and people along the way.
- And most importantly the narration for providing the drive and glue.
Initially we stumbled across land drains and storm drains and after some research realised just how much damage was being done to our beautiful rivers by them. So we added a simple low impact storm drain badge showing how many we had passed at that point. We displayed them unobtrusively along the way to keep the pollution factor in mind, but without forcing it in the viewers face. Regrettably so much green subject matter is now forced upon the viewer, to point of making it almost invisible.
The Rivers Trust have some very useful further information if you would like to explore the subject further here www.theriverstrust.org
As of Feb 2024 we have 16 x 20 min episodes (River Wharfe, Ure and Bain) filmed edited and ready to go to media channels. They can of course be configured to any episode length, this is just a convenient choice not knowing where the programme is destined.
Another 8 sections will shortly be in production following the river Ouse to the Humber and the sea.
We invite enquires from any media channel/distributor that would like to help us take All Rivers Great and Small to the next level.