Working as a freelancer at the BBC’s Factual and
Documentaries Department in White City, I produced this storyboard for a
documentary dramatising the catastrophic events of the Zeebrugge Ferry disaster
in 1987.
This was an ambitious project for a documentary which
combined interviews with the survivors, CGI effects shots and filmed dramatic
re-creations of the moment of the disaster.
The excerpt below is from my favourite scene which captures
the moment the Herald of Free Enterprise began to capsize. I found it a challenge to portray the energy
and horror of the scene, using the likenesses of the interviewed survivors who
were recalling their experiences.
It was also a challenge mentally to orientate the
environments 45 degrees so that a glass wall would become the floor.
With so much going on in the shot,
it was difficult to keep focused on the main point of action (the main
characters) without getting lost within the chaos of the whole scene.
I also needed to recreate the
darkness within the vessel as the lighting went off, leaving only dark voids
with slithers of light to define the character’s features. This led to a very atmospheric storyboard.
