Dalston Days

Well this was a nice surprise. The other day my friend Luis (also a film student) said he needed some help making his documentary on the area where he lives, Dalston. I had always had documentary film in the back of my mind-if you remember correctly from previous posts-and so I was more than happy to lend a hand.

The plan was pretty simple; with Luis holding the camera and me holding the microphone we waltzed around Dalston for a couple of days asking to talk to anyone who looked interesting. I know that seems rather vague and I guess it kind of was seeing as we didn't really have any hypothesis or specific matter to investigate but we felt that we'd just go out and see what happened and hopefully we'd be able to drag some decent footage out of the editing.


Our results felt pretty good after whaking everything in Final Cut. We came across quite a few characters who gave us a lot of lovely bits and bobs about the area however we did have a small set of questions to begin with these were.

1. If you were mayor of London what would you do to the area?

2. Dalston in three words?

3. What gives Dalston its character?

4. How has Dalston changed over the years?

We rarely asked one person all the questions as usually various other good questions would spring up as we went.