HOMEWARDBOUND
This not-for-profit initiative uniting women in STEMM had the most evocative tagline I’d ever heard: Mother Nature Needs Her Daughters. What would those daughters want to say to her?
The challenge here was: how do we take such a huge message as this and devise a video campaign that could lead directly into it while being produced on the smell of an oily rag?
The answer came to me: messages from daughters to their mothers in the case that their mums were unwell. The invitation was open: imagine your mum is really sick. What would you say to them? Then turn the inevitable messages into one directly aimed at Mother Nature.
Shot on one frozen day on the streets of New York, vox pop style with complete strangers, we invited women to send their messages to their mums right there in Greenwich Village.
Knowing roughly how I was going to edit the piece and having faith in the act of love this involved, we found a heartfelt and emotionally raw piece that still affects me to this day.
I love talking to real people, and managing to get them to open up. But standing behind that camera, doing all I could to draw these women into our orbit, I was struck by the lasting impact our mothers have — and how close to the surface lies all we feel for them.
Hard to imagine a better link to the planet that is so very in need of our love.