The Telus STORYHIVE Adventure !
“I don’t believe it… they accepted our proposal! We have $20,000CAN to make a documentary, and they know we are complete beginners! How amazing is that???”
Early in 2023 we had been writing umpteen grants, covering The Whole Dyslexic Society’s objectives, one of which is to improve Outreach, to have people understand why dyslexia exists, what it is, and what to do about it. First point to make is that writing grants is exceptionally boring, tedious, and mostly unrewarding, hence the incredulity and the excitement.
STORYHIVE Telus provide production grants for short documentaries including training, mentorship and distribution on TELUS Optik TV in 2024… In February 2023 they had said ”pitch us any short documentary ideas that you are passionate about” ... well that wasn’t too difficult and our working title became ‘The Need for NeuroInclusivity in Education and How’, so we pitched. We have had several working titles, the latest one is ‘Who Knew… NeuroInclusive Education is Achievable’.
They wanted our Logline:
Sue, the dyslexic mother of a dyslexic son shares a discovery, a little-known truth, that changed their lives for ever…. Everyone is Able to Learn.
Our Synopsis: Did anyone ever ask you how you think and learn? Do you think mostly with the sound of words or with pictures? Do you talk to yourself in your head; do you create an internal film when you read a book... do you do both? Why does it even matter?
Well, it matters to one third of the population who think in a different way to the way they are taught. They are incorrectly labeled learning disabled, when in fact, they are perfectly capable of learning.
We ask what is dyslexia, is it a learning disability? Is it just reversing ‘b’s and ‘d’s, not being able to read or is it a gift?
Ironically, it is the current teaching system that contributes to the cause of many learning challenges… and all it offers the teachers is to advocate for more of what the children couldn’t do already, expecting a different result… which is the definition of……?
Sue Blyth Hall is on a mission. She is a passionate, empathetic woman with a strong sense of justice, who is dedicated to bringing about that change. It is the education system that is disabled by a lack of understanding not the children. For them, they are living with a misdiagnosis of a life-threatening disease... how can this continue? She cannot stay silent.
Discovering her son was dyslexic launched her on a quest to uncover the truths and myths associated with many so-called learning disabilities. Her dream is for everyone, especially parents and educators to know the truths she uncovered, so that every child can enjoy their learning experience and fulfill their potential… from day one to forever.
We had to create a 1 minute pitch video - I created the text and Laura, our Administrator, created the images. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rDexZI0hBc/ They could definitely see we were beginners 😊!
Apart from the first cheque getting lost in the mail, everything went very smoothly. They sent us a HUGE StoryHive Creator Content Kit, 94 pages (!) for us to read… obviously they had no experience of dealing with dyslexics who don’t like reading… 😊.
First task is to create a Bonus Edition, basically a practice film. Everything just fell into place, as it does, when it’s meant to happen… Wendy, Sue’s TEDx coach helped with the script, Josh, a friend of Julie Brewer’s is a film-maker, Rob, a lawn bowling friend of Sue’s, a retired radio broadcaster led the interviews. The young man who designed Sue’s book cover designed the artwork for the thumbnail. With just the location to go… the most wonderful couple who own Millstone Farm and Organics, just around the corner to Sue, offered to close their farm shop for the morning, and allow themselves to be completely disrupted and rearranged for the filming.
We kept it simple for the Bonus film. Sue, and a very articulate Emily Tucker (a students’ mother) had a conversation led by Rob. The filming day was magical, the farmhouse shop has the best energy, there was plenty of laughter and plenty of material for the bloopers!
We all learned many lessons, met the deadline and prepared for the next stage; the Main Edition for which we were given a fabulous mentor from the National Screen Institute, Maureen Levitt. She is SO experienced and so gentle with this Steven-Spielberg-in-training. She found us a Director, Kelly Conlin of NiceLady Productions and guided Sue to create a ‘treatment’ which does sound medical, but its really a game plan for the whole production. Several attempts later it was good to go and now the fun starts… creating the production schedule, corralling the characters and securing the locations… filming starts in April…watch this space for Part 2 !!!
They could definitely see we were beginners 😊!
After that they wanted Community Relevance, Why Me, How to Tell the Story and an outline of the Bonus Program (which involves us testing out locations, interviewers and interviewees, equipment, lighting and conversation content and how we would spend the Budget). For me, as with most budgets, that was pretty much think of some numbers that add up to 20,000.
So now what ??? Laura O’Neill, our Administrator, set us up to be an efficient channel as usual, and then somehow the first cheque managed to get lost in the mail!!!
However, on a positive note we carried on as the Bonus film was due on December 6, 2023 we had to decide on:
Our message
Our audience
Who to interview
Who to be the interviewer
What locations
Who would do the filming
Who could help with the questions for the interviews… not exactly a script… but we needed to evoke answers that would flow into a story.
Who would design a graphic thumbnail for us?
They sent us a HUGE STORYHIVE Creator Content Kit, 94 pages (!) for us to read… obviously they had no experience of dealing with dyslexics who don’t like reading… 😊. It had every conceivable piece of information we would need and then they provided 3 Zoom sessions to go over the whole thing so we could ask questions. Much of the film-making part was very technical and completely over my head.
We had to get a new PO Box… and this time the cheque got sent to the wrong box !
When things are meant to happen, people appear to help them happen and the answers to the above questions soon became apparent…
Wendy Laroux was my TEDx script coach, has a son with ADHD and was delighted to help with the questions, she already knew the topic.
Josh Mansfield of Shiloh Music Studio was a friend of one of our Board, the father of a boy I had worked with and was the whole deal... film-maker, musician, had all the equipment for film, sound, lighting and editing, plus he was beginning to realise he might have this gift of dyslexia himself! Were we lucky or what?
I used to lawn bowl with Rob Berridge, a retired radio broadcaster, he had the voice and became the interviewer.
Nicholas Wisdom, one of my long-ago students, who designed my Fish Don’t Climb Trees book cover designed the artwork for the thumbnail.
Just the location to go… and the most wonderful couple in the whole world, who own Millstone Farm and Organics, just around the corner to me, offered to close their farm shop for the morning, and allow themselves to be completely disrupted and rearranged for the filming.
We kept it simple for the Bonus film, just interviewing Sue and one extremely articulate mother of a past student, Emily Tucker, who luckily had her bi-annual trip from Nelson planned for October.
The filming day was magical, the farmhouse shop has the best energy, Josh, Rob, Emily and Sue basically had fun! Rob kept the questions going and the conversation flowed. There was plenty of laughter and plenty of material for the bloopers!
Josh, Nicholas and Laura got us over the submission deadline and I learned many lessons, including to stop saying ‘right’ so often. I gathered feedback from good, honest friends and am now working on a new Storyboard because we meet our Film Institute mentor in January. I trust that she will guide us into the creation of a truly impactful documentary designed to illuminate the truth about many so-called learning disabilities.
Watch this space !!! and all positive energy appreciated, thank you!
‘Who Knew…NeuroInclusive Education is Achievable*’ is made possible with the support from TELUS STORYHIVE, and will be available for free on TELUS Optik TV in 2025.
*We have had several working titles, the latest one is ‘Who Knew… NeuroInclusive Education is Achievable”