Humanitarian Demining
The brief
Humanity & Inclusion, formerly Handicap International, needed a record of its demining work in Lebanon. Demining is difficult to film honestly. The work is methodical and slow by design, because the alternative to slow is fatal, and the danger that justifies the whole operation is invisible in every frame you can safely shoot.
Production approach
Fine Line filmed on site in the Aley area of Mount Lebanon while teams were clearing contaminated land, and treated the process as the subject rather than working around it. That meant filming the procedure at the pace it is actually done.
Two other elements carry what the field footage cannot. We filmed interviews at the Lebanese Mine Action Centre, which puts the clearance work inside the national programme that directs it, and we recorded testimony from people who had been injured by mines. Those testimonies supply the stakes. Without them a demining film is a procedural, and the reason the procedure exists never appears on screen.
The commission was not only a film. We delivered it as a full visual narrative of the field operations, with technical infographics explaining the clearance process and a professional photography series shot alongside the filming, so the client had material that worked in reports and print as well as on screen.
Outcome
The finished documentary runs three minutes and twenty nine seconds and serves a straightforward purpose: making the case for a Lebanon free of mines to people who will never stand on contaminated ground themselves.
The photography from the same shoot was delivered to stand on its own, which is usually the better argument for shooting stills alongside video rather than after it.
Client: Humanity & Inclusion · Production: Fine Line Production · Mount Lebanon, 2022
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