In China today over 80 million people have been born with or have developed a physical or mental disability. In some cases their disability has stopped them having access to standard education and employment, but mostly it is the assumptions others have about their abilities and the discrimination they face in all areas of life which holds them back. “Hello My Name Is …” is one of five video profiles from subjects interviewed in “We Are Different, We Are the Same.”
Part IV of this series takes place in Fuyang, the small city of 10 million in Anhui Province with Yuan Weiwei who was born with Cerebral Palsy. This video is a bit different and focuses on the family of the subject. This is also my favorite of the series.
To learn more about this series see this post.
“We Are Different, We Are the Same” is a web documentary created to help break down barriers and stigmas surrounding China’s large disabled population. The video gives a snap shot of disabled persons living throughout China.
Part IV of this series was the hardest of the videos. It also turned out to be my favorite.
The task immediately became a bit daunting when we found out our subject who we were meant to be profiling — couldn’t talk much.
While Weiwei was not afraid of the camera, his speech and dialogue were not developed enough to get entire sentences out of him. He also was not the most mobile of our subjects. He had trouble getting around, which made our filming locations limited.
However, even given these limitations the story developed in front of us into a rather heart warming story. The camera ended up turning to his mother to help drive the narrative, while Weiwei would maintain the visual story.
After a couple different versions of the script, we finally settled on the version you see here. After this we went into post production where the hardest decision was the music.
From an audience perspective, or film makers perspective, I’m not sure if people realize how hard it is to pick the correct music. It will instantly change the mood of your film and can even change the message. In many ways, I think the music is just as important as the images.
Our choice here, which came from stocksound.net, is bordering on cheesy — or too much. The story in itself is actually quite sad. However, the mother’s continued support and optimism is pretty inspiring. Given the dichotomous nature of those two feelings, it was very tricky to decide if we were bending the story toward an unreal truth with this music. There are a couple other versions with completely different songs, which won’t see the light of day, but they did truly change the mood of the film.
When we settled on this music, the images and pacing of the story were cut to fit and the product ended up being my favorite of the series — including the main movie.
Three weeks after these videos published on the premier of a Youku Channel, we got word that a local NGO in Anhui saw the video and actually approached Weiwei’s family to help. As a journalist and film maker this is great to hear. That our documentation of a live may have helped a family. Hopefully, more details on this later …
For now, enjoy “Hello, My Name Is …”
Jonah
