Guinea Alumina Corporation
Overview
In 2017, as part of the Mubadala Cinematic Portrait project we were commissioned to document the start of a 70-year bauxite mining operation for Guinea Alumina Corporation. The early stages of the project are mostly geared around training a local workforce, building infrastructure and supporting local communities in close proximity to the mine.
Project Brief
To explore the ethos of the company through an individual on the ground. Short, emotional story, pitched at stakeholders and customers, which resonate with the viewer and in turn reflect on the company as a whole.
Over an eight-day shoot, using drones, a cinema camera and a stabilised full-frame rig, we followed a GAC employee as he visited various projects in the Boke region of Guinea. We also documented the whole operation through stills photography.
The photography brief was to document the operation as a snapshot in time, to show the hard work GAC were undertaking to ensure the prosperity of the local communities and to showcase their corporate and social responsibility efforts.
Material Delivered
- 3 min corporate documentary
- 8 additional interviews with key employees and local community heads for use in future content
- General cinematic footage to be used in future company communications
- 150+ professional photographs documenting the company’s operations
Our Story
Over the last 10 years GAC have embarked on many CSR projects in Guinea. They are working to ensure that a large percentage of their workforce are Guinean with an aim to reaching 100% within the next few years. They are providing training, jobs, healthcare, schools and housing for a huge number of the local population around the areas they operate.
GAC were new to documentary storytelling so working together to Identify the right story and employee to fit the brief was key. Weeks in advance and working closely with the comms department on the ground in Guinea, our researcher conducted phone interviews with specially selected employees to establish who would best represent the company and their values. From these ‘chats’ we found Ibrahima.
Ibrahima hails from Conakry, Guinea’s capital city, however he spent most of his teens to twenties studying in the USA. He’s now responsible for the training and well-being of 150 future employees of the GAC mine in the Boke region of Guinea. He also has a personal mission; to see the people of Guinea benefit from the vast natural resources buried just beneath the surface of one of the world’s poorest countries. He returned from the US to work for GAC as he believes in his heart that this is the company which will finally help the Guinean people out of poverty.
Peter Darling
Communications Manager, GACBehind the scenes
Challenges
Obtaining Visas for Guinea was a lengthy process. Multiple organisational elements of the production had to be in place before permission to travel was granted.
Safety and security were a huge priority for us in a country that has a high risk of kidnapping and one which the British Foreign Office had advised against non-essential travel. This meant that our preparation was key, spending a large amount of time working on risk assessment and mitigation whilst liaising with our insurance company and local security at the GAC operation.
Bringing kit into the country and getting it out was a challenge. We had to choose the exact kit needed for the shoot and travel as light as possible. The varied locations on the shoot meant using light aircraft on dirt airstrips and so weight was a key factor. The weight of our kit and luggage was supplied weeks in advance of the shoot in preparation for these flights. We also needed to have enough batteries for the kit to function throughout long days with no access to electricity.
Cultural differences were also something we had to be aware of and sensitive to. Photographing locals, for example, is not advisable without explicit permission.
There were also significant language barriers. It wasn’t uncommon for communities a few miles apart to speak different dialects. In one interview we had questions and answers being translated through two interpreters and 4 languages.
Results
The resulting documentary is yet to be released but has been met with praise from both GAC, their parent company Emirates Global Aluminium and the investment fund Mubadala.
All parties have been excited by the wealth of extra content now available for company communications and are looking to document the next stage of the project; first ore on ship (FOOS), in the near future.
