London Interviews

Here are some of the interviews with passers by in London:

Kenneth Clarke

As part of our documentary we wanted to interview a well known politician to make our documentary more engaging and interesting for the audience. We have managed to get an interview with Kenneth Clarke, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice during one of his political surgeries. We have agreed to use the interview as part of our A Level coursework only and therefore are unable to upload it to youtube.



Kenneth Clarke has been in politics for just over 40 years and has held the following roles during his time:

MP for Rushcliffe, 1970 -
PPS to the Solicitor-General, January 1971 - April 1972
Assistant Government Whip, April 1972 - February 1974
Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury, January 1974 - February 1974
Opposition Social Security Front Bench Spokesman, June 1974 - November 1976
Opposition Industry Spokesman, November 1976 - May 1979
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Department of Transport, May 1979 - March 1982
Minister for Health, March 1982 - September 1985
Entered Cabinet as Paymaster General and Minister for Employment, September 1985 - June 1987
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for Trade & Industry, June 1987 - July 1988
Secretary of State for Health, July 1988 - November 1990
Secretary of State for Education and Science, November 1990 - April 1992
Home Secretary, April 1992 - May 1993
Chancellor of the Exchequer, May 1993 - May 1997
Shadow Secretary of State for Business, January 2009 - May 2010
Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, May 2010

We thought that Kenneth Clarke was a good choice for the politician we would use in our documentary as he has had a lot of experience within the government and currently specialises in the justice system. This would allow us to ask questions about Julian Assange's sexual assault charges as well as the availability of the internet in prisons.

London

George, Calum and myself went to London to film the opening shots and fill shots of our documentary. We filmed outside Parliament and on South bank with the Houses of Parliament in the background. We felt that this linked well to the theme of governments that is predominant in our documentary.



I was in front of the camera and asked passers by questions about the Wikileaks news story. These questions included:

What do you know about the Wikileaks news story?
What do you know about the sexual assault charges that Julian Assange faces?
Do you agree with these charges or do you think governments may be making these up to keep Julian silenced?
Do you think the Wikileaks news story shows that the government has lost control?
What effect do you think these leaks have had?

Calum and George filmed these questions being asked. George filmed the main interview whilst Calum used another camera to film some fill shots such as long shots and close ups of hands.



After the interviews, we filmed the opening of our documentary. The script for this part of the documentary can be found below:

With over 1 billion people exposed to the internet world wide and a massive 79% of all websites being created by the public, it is no wonder that governments' control over the world wide web has been questioned.
Take a look at one of the most prominent stories in the news today; with over 600 000 followers on twitter, 250 000 leaked cables and 40 million unique hits a month, it is no wonder that Wikileaks has shaken the foundations of governments' world wide. But have these recent breaches finally caused governments to loose control over the internet and its users?

Whilst filming this section of the documentary, Alistair Darling walked past us. As our documentary was about governments, we took the opportunity to try to ask him some questions. Unfortunately, Darling was not willing to give us an interview and we were unable to film the encounter.

Wikileaks Documentary

This week, a Wikileaks documentary was shown on BBC's Panorama. I watched this documentary in order to see some of the techniques that had been used for a documentary using the same topic as ours.

The link to this documentary can be seen below:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00yl1ng/Panorama_WikiLeaks_The_Secret_Story/

Storyboard for our documentary

Here is the storyboard for our documentary:

Background Information on Wikileaks

Here is some research that I have done in relation to Wikileaks and the government's control over the internet:

Media: The Internet lost control? Wikileaks

Julian Assange – History
• Founder, spokesperson and editor and chief of wikileaks
• In his youth hacked under the name of ‘Mendax’
• Believes in Freedom of press, censorship and investigative journalism
• US considered charges to do with the leaks however were told it would be hard to prosecute him
• Arrested on 7th December 2010 for alleged sexual offences

Wikileaks Story
• Founded in 2006
• Documents leaked onto the site include: extrajudicial killings in Kenya, a report of toxic waste dumping on the African coast, Church of Scientology manuals, Guantanamo Bay procedures, the 12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike video
• Approximately 251 000 American cables only 1295 released
• Temporary suspension of the site after information was released

Twitter
• Subpoena received by Twitter to effectively entailed the collection for criminal prosecution of the personal identifying information of over 600 000 followers of Wikileaks


Sexual Assault allegations
• In June 2010 pentagon officials were looking for Assange because what he was about to release could "puts his well-being, his physical life, in some danger now."
• 20th August 2010 Swedish police open investigation about Assange alleged sexual offences against two women aged 31 and 26
• Daily telegraph report: Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks website, could be sent to the Guantánamo Bay detention camp or even executed in the US if he is extradited to Sweden, his lawyers have warned.
• Stockholm's chief prosecutor Eva Finne reviewed the case and dropped the rape investigation, saying there was insufficient evidence to suggest rape
• On 6 December 2010 European arrest warrant is released
• 7th December handed himself in to met police
• Granted bail on 16th and placed under house arrest with bail set at £240 000
• No charges against him have been filed by Swedish authories… yet!


Julian Assange death penalties – many people in America have implied that Julian Assange should face the death penalty for releasing American government information. Footage of this would be good to use as part of our archive footage.