Launch! On the Sea with Scotland's Lifeboats
Director / Editor + Co-Producer with Screen Argyll
Jun 2019 – Present
Launch! On the Sea with Scotland’s Lifeboats is a film I’ve directed, edited and researched, and then toured to community cinemas across Scotland. Edited from footage found in the RNLI’s archives, Launch! celebrates the incredible work of generations of lifeboat volunteers. In September 2021, the film embarked on a Scotland-wide cinema tour as part of Scotland’s Year of Coasts and Waters 2020/21. Community screenings of the film are continuing on a request basis. Contact me if you’d like to screen it in your community.
The project idea came from the films from the RNLI’s archive that I had screened as part of the tour Made by the Sea. There’s some beautiful footage and audiences really responded to see the work of such an important service in their community. Inspired by touring composer and sound artist Jason Singh’s incredible score to the 1929 film DRIFTERS, I collaborated with the RNLI and Screen Argyll as my co-producer on developing Launch! as a brand new commission bringing together both archive film and digital video capturing volunteer RNLI crews working across Scotland with a live immersive score by some of the UK’s most exciting contemporary musicians.
We debuted a short version of the film with live score on Coastal Connections Day in Europe’s largest winter music festival Celtic Connections in January 2020. Then the global pandemic stymied our plans for live performance but we decided to develop the project for when big screens lit up again. I continued editing and Jason assembled an amazing group of musicians to compose, perform and record the new soundtrack: folk singer-songwriter Jenny Sturgeon (Salt House), Indo-jazz clarinettist and composer Arun Ghosh, and founder member of The Cinematic Orchestra, pianist John Ellis. Internationally-renowned music producer David McEwan of The Sanctuary Studio in London came on board to wor his magic: recording each musician remotely in the four corners of the UK and mixing their beautiful sounds together to create an atmospheric aural complement to the images in 5.1 surround sound.
Sharing a common obsession with the power of the sea, we’ve taken inspiration from the sounds, stories and people we’re discovering in the RNLI’s fascinating collection, as well as lifeboat films held in the National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive, to create this new audio/visual work that explores and presents our deep coastal connections in communities across the country, from Shetland to Mull.
We want to honour the fact that it takes a whole community to launch a lifeboat. From a poignant 1964 film of the Longhope lifeboat crew on Orkney, eight of whom tragically died on duty just five years later, to a successful night-time rescue by the Tobermory lifeboat crew captured by their onboard cameras, there’s some incredible images to which the musicians have created deeply emotional responses.
The cinema tour continued those values: each cinema was encouraged to connect with their local lifeboat station or fundraising branch to create a special event around screening the film. It could be rarely seen footage of the local lifeboat, an in-person discussion afterwards with RNLI crew, or a pre-recorded blether with a few of us involved in making the film. The fact so many people stuck with me on this project as funders, artists, and partners is testament to how much we believe in it, and wanted to share it with audiences who know how important the RNLI is in their community.
The tour is over now but if you’d like to screen the film, please Contact Me to discuss the details.
IMAGES: Eoin Carey
