Output details

Sutherland: The Empty Lands?

Commissioned by BBC Scotland from Triple Echo Productions

Dennis was the film editor for 'Sutherland: The Empty Lands?' commissioned by BBC Scotland and produced by Triple Echo Productions. This 60-minute documentary is a meditation on the nature of landscape and community using the narrative of walking a linear route across Sutherland around which to structure the programme. The walker (author, historian and wilderness hiker, Cameron McNeish) took a route through some of Scotland’s wildest and harshest countryside encountering individuals and remote communities in order to challenge the notion that Sutherland is an 'empty land'. The complex structure of the programme required Dennis to re-think conventional editing approaches. His challenge was to build a series of vignettes of rural and community life into a coherent argument whilst preserving the sense of a linear journey through a land that was largely wilderness. A wide variety of contributions from young crofters committed to preserving traditional ways of life, from oyster fishermen and sheep farmers, was key to telling this story and the selection and ordering of their thoughts and feelings were crucial. Dennis sought to sharpen the visual style of the piece as an way of emphasizing and supporting the spoken content, and the creative selection of meaningful images and sounds from the available material was vital in giving weight to the programme’s argument. The use of footage of busy rural communities, teeming with activity and life contrasted starkly with footage of the walker negotiating difficult terrain on some of Scotland's most remote and iconic hills such as Foinaven and Ben Loyal. Material of the walker breaking the journey to kayak out to Handa Island with a contributor had to be made to fit seamlessly and appropriately into the programme and support the overall narrative.