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About Ephemera

The striking images in Ephemera were achieved using a data projector to physically project filmed interviews onto the building fabric of West Kennet long barrow, part of the ancient Avebury complex in Wiltshire, UK. The result was a unique tactile fusion between Neolithic stone and modern digital technology. West Kennet was selected because it sits, guardian-like, opposite Silbury Hill – the site of a live televised excavation by the BBC in 1968 as part of the hugely popular series, Chronicle.

Upon the illuminated stone, the three interviewees – all regular TV archaeology protagonists – discuss archaeology’s portrayal on British TV beginning with the BBC excavation and moving onto the 90s surge in popularity of TV archaeology that Channel 4’s Time Team initiated. Time Team has made archaeology popular unlike any TV series before or since.  As well as a new series of episodes each year, the program has generated many specials, live events transmitted over the course of a weekend and national-scale projects such as last year’s Big Dig and this year’s forthcoming Big Roman Dig.

The three participants are:

• Mike Pitts, editor of British Archaeology magazine.  Mike regularly appears in documentaries about Stonehenge and Avebury, most notably Secrets of the Dead: Murder at Stonehenge. His news-stand magazine includes a column, written by students on the MA in Archaeology for Screen Media course, which reviews UK TV archaeology.

• Julian Richards, TV and radio broadcaster.  Julian is probably best known as the presenter of BBC 2’s Meet the Ancestors and Blood of the Vikings as well as radio series including BBC Radio 4’s Mapping the Town.  Meet the Ancestors pioneered the use of the then new lightweight mini-DV cameras to create a far more mobile TV-production experience on a restricted budget, but one that reflected that sense of ‘mucking-in’ that working on an archaeological dig is about. Julian’s website is http://www.archaemedia.net/tv.asp.

• Francis Pryor, President, Council for British Archaeology http://www.britarch.ac.uk/.  Francis regularly appears on Channel 4’s Time Team as well as writing and presenting his own series including Britain AD.

As the film begins to probe archaeology’s portrayal a little deeper, and asks whether the reconstructions featured in these programs genuinely advance our understanding of the past, Francis Pryor cites the reconstruction of Seahenge that he was directly involved with for the Time Team Seahenge special.  From this, the current and future state of TV archaeology is discussed which, at the time of filming, was represented by new series such as BBC 2’s Hidden Treasure and Channel 4’s Extreme Archaeology, both faster-paced, visually slicker programs with snappy music and younger participants but thinner on content and long-term viewer appeal.  Curiously, both those series have not returned to UK screens and are unlikely to do so, at least in their previous incarnations.

Ephemera is somewhere between a talking head documentary and a video installation.  The concept behind the video projections was to place the importance back upon the archaeology by literally making the interviewees elements within the archaeological context, rather than following the normal pattern of having the archaeology serve as cutaways that mask over edits in the more dominating interview.  The technique of fusing different technologies to create news ways of engaging viewers is one that the film-maker intends to develop for his future work.