1. In Pastures Green
Structure
Video Audio
Footage of sheep with lambs in
field
Dad's home movie footage
Dad's Bolex camera
End – back to sheep – filming
with Bolex
Farmer (me) walks out amongst
sheep
Voiceover explaining idea for
film – question: why??
Voiceover linking personal
creativity to dad's creativity
Voiceover explaining idea for
the end of the film – hymn The
Lord's My Shepherd

2. Video Audio
Black screen – title: In
Pastures Green
Sheep with lambs in a field.
Country sounds – birds, sheep
etc.
It's springtime again and there
are sheep in the fields with
their newborn lambs.
For some weeks now I've had it
in mind to make a film about
sheep. In the film I would show
how sheep give birth to lambs
and then I'd show the lambs with
their mothers in the fields like
this – except that over these
images you'd hear the voice of
the farmer talking about the
economics of it all – how much
each lamb is worth – how much
they cost to rear and so on.
It would create a kind of mildly
jarring experience for the
viewer, I thought – seeing the
lambs innocently enjoying their
first moments of life while
listening to the brutal facts
explaining their existence.
That was the idea anyway.
The problem was I couldn't get
any farmers to let me film on
their farms. They were all too
busy, they said. The last thing
they needed was some prat with a
camera following them around all
the time. So that was a bit of
a dead end.
Still, I thought – I didn't
necessarily need to film the
sheep giving birth. I could
just make do with this kind of
footage of the sheep with their
lambs in the fields which would
be easy to capture without
requiring permission. And then,
come to think of it, I didn't
need to interview the farmer
either; I could just do a bit of

3. Dad's home movie footage.
research on the internet and
deliver the voiceover myself.
This is what I found out on the
internet.
But why did I want to make this
film? What was the point?
These are probably the earliest
films I ever saw – my dad's home
movies of our family in Northern
Rhodesia – now Zambia – in the
50s. My dad filmed them with his
clockwork Bolex 8mm camera and
then screened them with a
projector that he must have
bought at the same time. It was
always a big occasion in the
family when the projector came
out and we enjoyed a screening
of his latest film – although as
I got older I have to confess I
always found them a bit
disappointing. They were grainy
and wobbly and without sound,
but more than that there was no
particular story or structure to
them. They were just a sequence
of random shots and when they
were over, there was always a
slight feeling of anti-climax in
the room – like watching a
football match that ends in a
goal-less draw.
There are a couple of other
things that strike me about my
father's films. Firstly – as
the man behind the camera, he
almost never features in them
himself. The Bolex was quite a
complex machine to operate, as I
recall, and he rarely gave it to
anyone else to handle, so the
footage he filmed of the family
is always the family as seen
through his eyes, but without
him in it. Secondly, the other
notable absence in most of these
films is me. I wasn't born
until the very end of my
father's posting in Africa, and

4. Sheep footage intercut with home
movie footage.
The Bolex
so I only feature as an
unrecognisable baby in one or
two of the later African films.
Is it facetious of me to see
some similarity between my
father's home movies and my
sheep footage? In both of them
the filmmaker is standing apart
from the scene, momentarily
capturing it from a distance. In
both we see the spectacle of
young creatures enjoying their
innocence, quietly guarded by
their mother. And in both there
is the sense of a scene in which
the young subjects are
blissfully unaware of their
place in any wider narrative –
or any context in which these
moments might be anything other
than what they appear to be.
This is my father's camera which
when I found it recently in one
of his bedroom cupboards had not
been used for over 30 years.
At the end of my film about
sheep, I wanted to show the
farmer walking in the field
amongst his flock to the tune of
The Lord's My Shepherd – which
of course would be ironic as the
farmer would already have been
represented as a rather
unfeeling character – only
interested in his sheep insofar
as they provide him with income
when they are sold to be
butchered.