This is a film I made in 2018 with Jonathan Meades on Jargon. In it Jonathan looked at how jargon, in all walks of life, is used to obscure the truth and degrade language – he contrasted it with the use of slang which gets to the heart of the matter and is inventive and poetic. It was quite a controversial piece especially a sequence on Donald Trump – this was at a time when UK politicians were fawning over him and the BBC in particular were loath to call him out. We had quite a battle to get the sequence transmitted uncut. Rachel Cooke in the New Statesman wrote,
How on earth did Jonathan Meades on Jargon make it all the way to the screen? Were the people in BBC corporate responsibility (or whatever it’s called) drunk or stoned or something, or did it unaccountably bypass their office all together?
Since the film was basically just Jonathan talking, we shot him against a green screen and then the very talented graphic designer Tony Bannister created an fantasy ‘Jargon’ world for Jonathan to be in. Sam Wollaston in the Guardian wrote in his review.
Blisteringly brutal, clever and hilarious. It manages to be visually interesting on what looks like a budget of 40 quid.
We had a bit more than 40 quid but not much more.
Francis Hanly Films 