Bob has motor neurone disease. He attends the Day centre at St. Christopher's Hospice in Sydenham, where Rosetta Life has just started a residency. A few weeks ago Bob had a disturbing dream that he wanted to explore. As he described it I wrote it down. Together we weighed up his words, retaining those he considered salient and evocative. Then Bob delivered his poem to camera as I cued him, line by line.
We've cut my cueing voice out of the final version and added the sound of waves to fill the silences left by the absence of the cueing voice. These gaps seem to add poignancy to the poem. You will notice little dissolves where we shortened the gaps when they felt too long. To make this work it's important to keep the camera locked off on a tripod in precisely the same position throughout.
Bob is now working on a piece about bereavement, from the patient's point of view.