Kilinic Community Health Care provides health, counselling and education services for people in Manitoba, with offices in Brandon and Winnipeg; one of the services they run is the Manitoba Suicide Line. The MSL is launching a new website (designed by Tactica) in the next few months to bring the hotline more attention and part of that launch includes video interviews with people affected by suicide.

A few weeks ago we traveled to Brandon Manitoba to shoot the first round of these interviews. I lived in Brandon for many years and got my start in media production while living there as an EFP/ENG camera operator for the recently closed TV station CKX-TV.  I enjoyed the chance to go back there and do some production. The morning of the shoot I had time to head to my alma-matter, Assiniboine Community College, to speak to current Media Production students who are in the same course I took many years ago.

The second set of interviews were done last week at Klinics head offices in Winnipeg.

The interviews were done first-person style, with the subjects looking directly at the camera, so that the visitors to their site will get a more personal message when they view them. Some of the interviewees were people that had attempted suicide, some were family members and/or friends of people that had completed suicide and some were councillors and people involved in their communities.

The subject matter was very different than anything I have worked on before. Talking to people about their very personal experiences in a sensitive subject was a humbling experience, and the people at Kilinic in Brandon and in Winnipeg were great to work with.

The videos and website launch will be highlighted here of course, I look forward to seeing them completed.