CLIPPED WINGS (2020)
Producer / Director
Clipped Wings is a short documentary following the life of Kay Ounsworth, a remarkable woman, who runs a bird rescue out of her council house home on the Isle of Wight. Relying on donations, Kay’s every day is a balance of rescuing, medicating, housing and caring for all kinds of birds; Kay is also the primary carer for her husband Gary, who requires round-the-clock care, as well as a mother to her 13 year old daughter. This incredible story follows the ins and outs of Kay’s daily routine, her struggles and perspectives on how her life is a whirlwind of constant caring for people and animals alike.
This was a low-budget documentary with a team of 6. Of all the films I have worked on, this is the one I want to follow up. Kay’s story is incredible, a truly selfless individual with a story that sounds so fantastical that it would be deemed too quirky if it were a piece of fiction. From the dozens of injured and sick birds in her garden, to her husband who requires home dialysis, Kay’s every day is exhausting to watch, let alone partake in. In our brief time with Kay, we explored so much and gathered around 30 hours of footage. We spent around 8 weeks in the edit, we told and retold the story over and over, aware that there were so many directions to take the narrative. Eventually, we decided to focus on Kay herself, a case study of an individual.
One day I hope to gain a larger budget and create a pitch based on the original documentary, to follow Kay again and dig deeper into her story. I want to raise more awareness for Kay, as her rescue boasts extreme statistics that rival and even exceed the national organisations themselves, something incomprehensible, yet speaks so much about a wider political issue.
I initially became aware of Kay in 2019 when I rescued an injured Magpie and the only rescue that would take it was Kay. This would later lead to me meeting Kay for coffee and discussing the potential for a short documentary based on her, her family and the rescue.
This documentary was so exhausting to film and research. The small crew we had were working constantly, filming everything, following Kay across the Isle of Wight as she travelled as cheaply as possible. We followed her collecting birds, from the public who reported injured birds, travelling to distant towns to take them to the vets, returning to her home to feed, maintain and give medical aid to each different avian companion. Then came the housework, the workload of a mother to a young teenage girl, the carer who is responsible for the wellbeing of her disabled husband and the constant calls managing and working with other charities.
We were young and inexperienced filmmakers. Looking back, we did extremely well with the tools that we had, but I personally feel as if I could have done so much better in the role of producer and director. I had a good personal relationship with Kay and needed to utilise that more to get the footage and interviews required to really uncover the personal layer that the documentary needed. The 5:00am starts and 22:00pm ends, with an entire day of filming, talking and travelling were truly exhausting and by the final day, I was making mistakes; not following up with the correct questions, not directing Kay to address specific questions in the needed format, not double checking the shots were capturing the intended visuals. This film required more planning, experience and time than we were first aware, this was not a small, cute documentary but a real story, unusual and quirky with a truly tragic underlining that required so much more exploring than we were able to do in the brief time we had.