Narrative take 2

So me and anna sat down wrote some questions and emailed Grace's uncle whose worked as a Butcher and in an Abattoir for many years. Unfortunately we didn't think it would be possible to use his responses. So I had a look on the internet for some inspiration.

http://www.humanecologyreview.org/pastissues/her171/Fitzgerald.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughterhouse
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/abattoir
http://www.amazon.com/Slaughterhouse-Shocking-Inhumane-Treatment-Industry/dp/1573921661/
http://www.animalwritings.com/2008/06/interviews-with-slaughterhouse-workers.asp
http://xeny.net/the_silence_of_the_lambs
http://a-denison252717-sp.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/OUAN505%20Applied%20Animation%202

http://www.humanecologyreview.org/pastissues/her171/Fitzgerald.pdf

I wanted to mash together a script from facts and quotes, but their isn't a great deal out their that faces the hard realities of it, nor is their anything that's truly reliable. I was reading essays on the history of the slaughter house thinking this is not relevant. We need something unique and I just don't know what to do.

In the end I went back to Anna's quotes and see if I could find more about them. When I delved deeper it turned out that they weren't just from a "love vegan" website but that they were actually taken from a book. So this was really exciting. I read half the book. There were some real tear jerking interviews in it, everything from chicken farms, to the farms where they take the plume off birds for duvets and pillows to hogs and cows. So the two ideas:

IDEA 1

We have two different speakers, but they are both in the same abattoir. During the shots where the abattoir is empty we have the titles, over the empty shots then it’s taken in turns between the two different speakers and the focus varies between the two different puppets in the storyboard for each of the quotes.  We do care, don’t be ignorant any more, eat meat, source local.

"I've seen hogs beaten, whipped, kicked in the head to get them to the restrainer. One night, I saw a driver get so angry at a hog he broke it's back with a piece of board."

"Management was constantly complaining to us about blown loins. They claimed that when the stunner voltage was too high it tore up the meat. The supervisors always wanted it on low stun no matter what size hogs we were stunning. When you got big sows and boars in the restrainer, the stunner wouldn't work at all."

"When hogs end up in the catch pen alive, the shackler beats them over the head with a lead pipe a couple of times - until they're dazed so he can get a chain around the hog's leg - and then he hoists it up. By then they may have come back to life and be squealing their heads off."

"The managers would say, 'that's just muscle reaction, nerves. It's not alive.' I'd say, 'then why's the damn hog trying to bite me? Just how stupid do you think I am?'"

"After they left me, the hogs would go up a hundred-foot ramp to a tank where they're dunked in 140 degree water. That's to scald the hair off...there's no way these animals can bleed out in the few minutes it takes to get up the ramp. By the time they hit the scalding tank, they're still fully conscious and screaming."  

“I’d Come home, wife would ask me how my night went, and instead of being happy to see her, I’d say, “What the hell do you care?’”

Fiona over end credit of lights turning off: We do care, don’t be ignorant, eat meat, source local.

“Workers open the hide on the legs, the stomach, the neck; they cut off the feet while the cow is breathing. It makes noise. It’s looking around,” said one worker. ‘Cows can get seven minutes down the line and still be alive. I’ve been up to the side-puller where they are alive. I’ve been up to the side-puller where they are alive. All the hide is stripped out down to the neck there,” said another.

“Their eyes look like they are popping out. I feel bad that I have to do my job on them,” explained a third.

“Sometimes they go pretty far. Sometimes they have all the skin out and they’re all peeled. Sometimes you can tell they’re alive because when you look at their eyes, you can see the tears of cow. And their eyes are moving and everything. But mainly they just make a lot of noise and are trying to kick,” described another.

“I’ve seen thousands and thousands of cows go through the slaughter process alive. If I see a live animal, I cannot stop the line. Because the supervisor has told us that you have to work on a cow that’s alive”

http://www.amazon.com/Slaughterhouse-Shocking-Inhumane-Treatment-Industry/dp/1573921661/

Idea 2

Same as before but instead of the hog quotes, quotes from the afterword of the same book regarding cows.

“Workers open the hide on the legs, the stomach, the neck; they cut off the feet while the cow is breathing. It makes noise. It’s looking around,”

‘Cows can get seven minutes down the line and still be alive. I’ve been up to the side-puller where they are alive. I’ve been up to the side-puller where they are alive. All the hide is stripped out down to the neck there,”

“Their eyes look like they are popping out. I feel bad that I have to do my job on them,”

“Sometimes they go pretty far. Sometimes they have all the skin out and they’re all peeled. Sometimes you can tell they’re alive because when you look at their eyes, you can see the tears of cow.”

“And their eyes are moving and everything. But mainly they just make a lot of noise and are trying to kick,”

“I’ve seen thousands and thousands of cows go through the slaughter process alive. If I see a live animal, I cannot stop the line. Because the supervisor has told us that you have to work on a cow that’s alive”

End speech: Stop the line. Eat meat, Source Local.


I personally prefer the Cow interview, because I feel like I can resonate with it more because at the start of the project I spent a whole afternoon crying after watching a cow being stunned and tears running down it's face. I went meat free for a fortnight till I smelt bacon. But in all honestly I don't really mind which we do, I know Anna really wants to make pigs so we will probably end up doing that one.