Author: Fiaz Ahmed

(July to October 2025)

The last few months has been a period of learning, being personally tested, and moving from theory into real world practice. Born On Death Row now feels like a real production with international footage, new collaborators, and a growing sense of direction.

July & August

Two months of preparation and planning, with a growing sense of real world pressure as our upcoming Moby interview in Los Angeles drew closer.

We mapped out the structure for future interviews with guardians of ex-laboratory beagles — relaxed, intimate conversations in people’s homes about life after the laboratory — and began exploring crew options for this style of shoot.

Around the same time, I was invited to my first public speaking engagement, giving a 45-minute talk about our animal sanctuary at Vegan Camp Out, the world’s biggest vegan festival. The talk mattered — not just for outreach but because the retreat helps sustain this project financially.

We also turned it into a filming exercise, recording the talk from four different mobile-phone angles. A week later, with animal cover in place for the sanctuary, we were heading for Heathrow Airport!

September — Los Angeles

September marked a milestone: our first international filming block in Los Angeles.

While we recovered from jet lag in LA, that sanctuary talk footage became my hands-on introduction to synchronised multi-cam editing and proxy workflows – an exciting piece of the learning curve for me and as usual, a great test of patience for Jacqui! The edit was worth it though, as this upcoming winter season already has a much higher level of bookings at the retreat.

Thirteen Puppies!

Whilst staying with Beagle Freedom Project, we had the surprise pleasure of babysitting 13 rescued maltese puppies overnight who had been rescued from a puppy mill. They were on a stop-over on their way to their foster homes. Luckily they were quite well behaved overnight, but also very messy!

Then things took a testing turn — with the first half of the plans falling through, and we had to rebuild our schedule and crew at speed. We relocated, re-grouped, and hired new people in just a couple of days. It was a costly but defining experience that tested our focus and resilience.

Our positive mindset was quickly rewarded by Jane from UnchainedTV who responded to our message on Instagram with a very warm dinner invite where we ‘talked shop’ and shared connections, before taking a marina walk to ‘get down’ at MDR Dance!

We got to grips with the Blackmagic Camera App on the iPhone, mounted on a gimbal and recording ProRes directly to an external SSD — a lightweight but cinematic setup that proved invaluable for our experimental vox-pops with the soulful characters at Venice Beach Skate Park.

A supportive conversation with the very courteous Dr Alka Chandna from PETA led us to a spontaneous six-hour drive upstate to San Francisco where we interviewed Rebekah Robinson of Dane4Dogs, a small but determined grassroots group that has helped to actually ban animal testing in several Wisconsin cities through ballot initiatives, and is taking legal action against Ridglan Farms, one of the US’s largest beagle breeders, for regulatory violations. Their courage, persistence and tactical approach was a great inspiration.

Back in LA we filmed with @OtisTheHandsomeHound, a gentle laboratory survivor, and his devoted guardian in their beautiful Santa Monica home — both loving souls who brought much-needed warmth and humanity to the story.

The Moby Interview

Our trip concluded with a powerful interview with Moby, whose thoughts on transparency, compassion, and creative activism fit perfectly into the film’s core themes.

Despite a tense and time-limited setup, we stayed composed, respected Moby’s boundaries, and secured strong, thoughtful answers to our prepared questions.

October

Back in the UK, we touched down straight into a couple of weeks of getting back on the ground at the sanctuary, we set up a new enclosure and trellis fencing, and replaced a very mature, but unfortunately very toxic, wisteria with animal-safe jasmine.

Next, we acquired our own professional cinema camera (used but mint condition), giving us the independence to film on our own schedule and explore freely.

The past few weeks have been all about getting to grips with it — learning its controls, testing lenses and filters, and integrating it into our Linux-based DaVinci Resolve workflow.

We’ve also been consolidating everything from the US shoot — syncing, logging, backing up, and shaping it into a coherent archive for long-term post-production.

Now, with the Moby interview recorded, we’re ready to return to the pitch video with much more substance and perspective.

Meanwhile, sanctuary life continues in parallel — volunteers caring for the animals, constant maintenance, and moments of calm that remind us what all this is for.

It’s been a demanding but transformative few months. Born on Death Row feels less like a project and more like a living, evolving organism — tested, stretched, and now finding its rhythm.

What’s Next?

We are very much looking forward to further UK interviews and location pieces over the winter as well as a follow up return trip to the US which includes interviewing a lifelong animal researcher and following the prosecution of Ridglan Farms.

Oh and stop playing with the new camera equipment and FINISH THE PITCH VIDEO!!!

I had been putting off writing our next update because it felt like it had been several months since the last one with little progress to report.

But when I wrote it down, quite a lot has been done in the last 10 weeks, we’ve just been too busy to remember doing it all!

With our non-filmmaking background, much of the bulleted small steps below are foundations for our extra big idea of an open, collaborative and persistent production model. These were accomplished in addition to the daily challenges of running our animal sanctuary and retreat.

There has been quite a serious learning curve – but that 95% dormant brain capacity sure came in handy!

Thank You, First Donors

First of all, a big thank you is in order to our very first donors who had faith in our documentary project based on a one page website and pitch deck, without even any video on it. This was off a free entry in a campaigns mailshot by Tim from Vegfest, so thank you to you too, Tim!

First Filming Days

• Filmed the two demonstration events, WDAIL at Camp Beagle and their petition debate demo at Westminster.
• Filmed our first impromptu street interviews.
• Filmed a creative shot with a professional violinist.
• For this we assembled and coordinated two separate film crews at quite short notice.
• Wrote shot lists and interview questions
• All of this was a total first for us, but very rewarding and energising.
• Seeing the enthusiastic and professional crew come together to support our seed of an idea, and watching that first playback of what we had filmed, was definitely a key moment.

Pitch Video

• After 12 revisions of the voice over, cutting it down from 5 minutes to 2:45, we finally settled on a (current) final version for the pitch video, and it’s still a bit too long!
• We are in the middle of writing the shot list to go with the words.
• Our editors have started assembling rough cuts of our ideas.
• Considered typical production and distribution routes, but decided it would be far more authentic to seek support from our own animal advocacy community, and the animal free science community.

Techno Notice:

• Set up organised cloud media storage for all our images, videos and camera masters, we already have 800Gb and anticipate around 6 terabytes for the project.
• Devised a media management workflow and a custom file naming convention.
• Set up collaborative editing, so a team can work on the same video editing and post production at the same time, from anywhere.
• Explored digital tools for researching the corporate and regulatory landscape of the subject, and for visualising that information.

Outreach & Connection

• Set up a contact database and an outreach workflow.
• Drafted separate email templates introducing the project, asking for support and inviting for interview.
• Set up a LinkedIn profile to connect with interviewees, advisors and contributors.
• Set up an Instagram page to attract public support in the project, by sharing our production work and personal journey.

Decided to Defer Some Decisions

After some quite overwhelming deliberation over the major form, direction and stance of the film, a fellow filmmaker gave the advice that many of these creative decisions will emerge from just trying different things out. Sounds simple, but it was a relief to hear.

So, as to the following questions, we’ll see what comes:

• Who will narrate it? Will they be off screen or on screen?
• Do we use our personal story in the film?
• Why does the audience need this when it’s not about us, it’s about dogs?
• Do we keep it formal and impartial…investigative…authoritative?
• Do we look for a production deal, or do we stay independent?
• What about funding? At times money feels inappropriate given the subject matter, at other times the project feels pointless without mega-money to match what we are challenging.
• What about distribution – audience attention is evolving rapidly.

What’s Next?

Stop drooling over camera equipment we can’t afford and FINISH THE PITCH VIDEO!!!