NAME Nicola Leddy
JOB Video and photography lead
WESBITE Nicola Leddy
SHOW REEL vimeo
PROJECT Quaestio
It’s a great chance to explore different storytelling techniques and express your creativity without the constraints and pressure of a client or brief.
Nicola Leddy is the Film and Photography Lead at Teenage Cancer Trust.
At the moment she’s in the middle of finishing off a series of videos created with user generated content to raises awareness of the symptoms of various cancers.
She gets to film some very personal and creative films with young people, including this one looking at young people’s body confidence after cancer.
WHAT IS YOUR PROJECT
My project is called Quaestio and it’s short documentary about a young man who was told he’d never walk again who teams up with a dancer to make a piece that uses disability to examine masculinity, body image and what happens if you don’t fit in.
HOW DID IT COME ABOUT?
I was working in an agency at the time working on branded content and I really craved working on human interest stories.
An actor friend of mine got in contact and asked me if I’d be interested in filming a dance project he was involved in. Instead of saying “no” straight away, I looked for the story, which unveiled itself after I met with the choreographer and dancer.
I had such a gut feeling about the story that I put everything into it, working on it every free hour I possibly had, establishing really strong relationships with the contributors.
WHAT DID YOU HOPE TO ACHIEVE WITH IT?
Initially, I was creatively bored at work and all I wanted to do was make something visually interesting and tell an interesting story. As I got deeper into it, I wanted to do justice to the people and story involved. Also, I hadn’t had the opportunity to really show what I could do as a documentary filmmaker, this was my chance to do that.
WHAT’S THE OUTCOME OF THE PROJECT
I knew someone who knew someone who worked at BBC3 and got to the right person who licensed it and published it on BBC3 Amazing Humans Youtube channel.
Amazingly, it got 7 million views and was a real turning point in my career.