Planting Sounds: re-framing the acoustic environment in 'Tree People' (2014), the story of the Colne Valley Tree Society

In 1997, I moved to the Colne Valley in West Yorkshire and began volunteering with a local voluntary group, the Colne Valley Tree Society, who plant trees in the valley most winter Saturday mornings. A few years later I began working as a music technology lecturer at the University of Huddersfield and gravitated slowly towards digital filmmaking in my own practice and research with a particular emphasis on documentary film sound. Around 2010 these two activities were brought together as I began filming the activities of the Society for what was to become the documentary film, Tree People. Consequently, I began to explore the history of the Society and the local area itself as I became aware of just how much of a difference their tree-planting activities over many years had made to the valley’s landscape. This article explores the relationship between my own aesthetic ideas and goals in terms of documentary film and its associated digital techniques, especially as it relates to the sonic, the subject matter of the film itself, and the historical and social context of the Society and its location.