Content alert! As the headline suggests, this has absolutely nothing to do with cars. If you are expecting a car to show up at any point in this story, prepare to be disappointed.
I am studying for a Masters degree in International Journalism with Edinburgh Napier University. One of the outputs of that process has been this blog – although I admit to being extremely patchy in my upkeep of it.
The course includes a module on documentary film production – a field of journalism about which I know (or rather, knew) nothing. It was with enormous trepidation that I embarked upon this particular module, which took me WAY out of my word-based comfort zone. Learning to tell a story with moving images was a fascinating and indeed all-consuming process. Even more of an uphill struggle was grappling with the technology of filming and editing. I have gained enormous respect and admiration for the crafts of production, editing, sound, cinematography … (and more). For anyone interested in such things, I filmed the whole thing on my iPhone 7 and edited it in Premiere Rush (I found Premiere Pro too scary for a newbie).
Finding a story to tell was also an extremely interesting process, made even more so by the lockdown restrictions resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. I initially started down the route of mobility – exploring stories I could develop locally. The rural Scottish village where I live has a limited transport infrastructure, so I decided to delve into one or two local community transportation initiatives.
In my search for characters through which I could tell that story, I was put in touch with a fabulous woman called Veronica Doyle, who happens to live just around the corner from me. It turns out that the story of her life as a nanny is far more interesting and colourful than anything I could have cooked up involving assorted modes of transport. Here is her story …
Elaine Catton 
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