Filming B-roll footage in São Paulo for Al Jazeera

The Listening Post is a long-running weekly programme on Al Jazeera English that dissects the world’s media and how topical stories are covered by the press. Richard Gizbert presents the half-hour show, and Brazilian coverage of Covid-19 was in the spotlight for the show in mid-April.

An 11-minute report outlined how a consortium of leading news organizations had been set up to counter misinformation from the Brazilian president’s office about the efficacy of masks and the safety of vaccines. This consortium, which includes the newspapers Folha de São Paulo and Estadão, was set up to ensure that facts based on data and science were reaching the general public, at a time when conspiracy theories and ambiguous government messaging about the vaccine meant that a large number of Brazilians were not planning to be vaccinated.

The Al Jazeera production team filmed a series of interviews with journalists and academics in Brazil, discussing the government’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis in Brazil as well as giving important context on how president Bolsonaro has used social media to engage with Brazilians since coming to power. Story Productions stepped in at short notice to shoot B-roll footage to illustrate the interview material during the report. We arranged to film six people consuming coronavirus news; watching the news on television, browsing news websites on phones and tablets; and reading the main broadsheet newspapers.

Story Productions provides full production services in Brazil, and for this job we sourced the six participants and organized where to shoot in São Paulo. Our Brazilian crew on the day of the shoot was comprised of a DoP and a producer. We also shot cutaways of piles of newspapers and newsstands, to help add visual interest to the story. Watch the video report here.

Our mission is to help clients looking to film in Brazil, whether that’s filming in São Paulo, filming in Rio or in other cities or remote locations in Brazil. Whatever the budget or location, Story Productions has a multi-lingual crew to suit. Get in touch for a quote.

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