When things fall apart, DRC August 2009.

Congo Mines, 2009. from caparkinson on Vimeo.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is an incredibly difficult, complicated and dangerous place to work. Large parts of the country are essentially lawless and armed bands (including the National Army) roam the roads and jungle tracks looking to shake people down for money or cigarettes.

I first worked there as part of a team with Orla Guerin and Producer Tara Neil in October 2008 as the Tutsi militia commanded by General Nkunda advanced to the gates of Goma, in the East of the country. The Congolese National Army (known as the FARDC) was in a rapid retreat and hundreds of thousands of civilians flooded into refugee camps to escape the carnage. It was a terrible introduction to one of the toughest parts of the world for a TV crew to operate in. The army threatened and robbed us on our first day and the refugees were hostile as they believed we were going to sell their pictures to the militias.

Sunday Church Service in South Kivu, DRC.

I finally returned to the DRC at the start of August (2009), this time to Bukavu in the Province of South Kivu. The various factions were still fighting but the FARDC backed by the UN has finally gotten the upper hand and the rebels (mainly the Hutu FDLR this time) were on the retreat. Myself, Correspondent Karen Allen and Producer Tara Neil were working on a story about the militarization of mining and the tough conditions endured by those digging up the mineral Coltan that goes into many electrical products. To illustrate the story we had to get to some of the most remote areas in the world. Places rarely visited by foreigners. We were forced to charter a plane to take us to an airstrip in the middle of the jungle, near the small town of Lilungu. Due to the nature of the terrain and lack of roads were forced to travel on the back of motorbikes. Out of necessity I decided to film on a Sony Z1 and leave my DSR 500 at the Hotel in Bukavu. Despite testing the Z1 thoroughly before the assignment it decided to stop working the minute I began to film. Luckily I do though always carry a spare DV camera with me. It is a consumer camera I picked up on London’s Tottenham Court Road for about six hundred pounds. The Canon HV 30 is small and versatile. It shoots on tape and you can switch between DV and HDV. The reason I chose this as my personal camera is that it has a mini-jack microphone input and a headphone socket meaning at least I can get decent audio with it and even use it with one of my Radio mics. I quickly ripped the camera from its pouch, attached my small wide angle adaptor and began to film.

All kitted up for the Motorbike journey through South Kivu

I hadn’t expected to have to use this camera for the whole trip and so my spares for it were minimal. I explained the situation to the team and we agreed that we would only shoot what was absolutely necessary. As we headed off to find the mines I prayed that I had enough juice to see me through the trip. After a long and incredibly uncomfortable journey we finally reached the mines and filmed our sequences. As we finished our piece to camera the red light began to flash and my camera died. Although I could have done with more footage I was relieved that we had got the key pictures in the bag. There was still though more shots that the team were hoping to get. I had one last option available – my stills camera. The Canon G10 is a 14.7 megapixel stills camera that also has a movie mode. I’d never tested the video option but had read a report that said it gave a pretty decent image. With no other option I resigned myself to finishing the shoot on my G10 and keeping my fingers crossed that the image would be usable. I decided that should we need to record decent audio I would ask Karen to record it on her marantz hard drive recorder and we could post sync it.

After another day of shooting we finally returned to the airstrip and met our flight back to Bukavu. The first thing I did was to switch on my Mac and load all of my pictures into Final Cut Pro. It wasn’t the disaster I’d feared. . . The shots from my HV 30 were actually not too bad (at least nothing some Post production couldn’t fix) while my video taken on the stills camera was surprisingly usable. Although I was unhappy not to have been able to film with my big camera and make the piece much stronger it was simply a relief to have gotten anything at all. I like to think that it was a case of improvising, adapting and overcoming. I hope the Ten o’clock news feel the same way when they realize half of their film was shot on a three hundred and fifty pound stills camera.