Six-year-old adorably narrates parents’ short film about lockdown life in Northants village

A talented family has created a touching video depicting what life is really like during lockdown in a Northamptonshire village.

The Baldwins who live in Great Houghton, shot the footage of their neighbours throughout the village on their daily walk to create what they hope becomes a piece of history that villagers can look back on.

Initially the short film was going to be narrated by a professional voice over artist, however for authenticity, six-year-old Amelie was asked to take on the role.

Frankie Baldwin, who owns Richer View Media Production with her husband Rich, said: “We originally thought about getting everyone in the village to say a couple of lines and then we thought about a professional voice over artist.

“We got one to record it but it just didn’t hit the right notes.

“We suddenly thought ‘what about Amelie?’ She has a certain innocence and it would be authentic because she is from the village.

“She struggled to pronounce some words but I think that just made it.

“Amelie really enjoys this kind of thing and she’s been really excited. She is very proud and so are all her school friends.”

The ‘Our Village’ film is the second lockdown video Richer View has made, while their work is on hold.

The first one was created from clips sent in from people across Northampton showing how they were keeping themselves entertained.But Frankie wanted the newest film to be a greater representation of reality.

She added: “It can’t all be positive, positive, there are great losses happening.

“We wanted this film to be a bit more sombre and a bit more of a real view of village life during lockdown.

“We really wanted to create something that the village could look back on because this is hopefully only going to happen once in our lifetime.”

To get the whole village involved, Frankie posted a message on the business’ Facebook page asking who wanted to join in.

After receiving a lot of responses as soon as the post went live, Frankie then had to create a filming schedule, as the family was wary about only being allowed out the house for a short amount of time.

“I started at the bottom of the village and worked my way up. I gave everyone ten minute slots and everyone was really good,” Frankie continued.

“We then used our daily exercise to go out and shoot it.

“We had the kids with us and we got them to stand behind the camera and make the kids in the film smile and relax, so it really was a family effort.

“I had one woman who messaged me about her dad who is in his late 80s. She thinks he is the oldest man in the village and she was desperate to get him in the film.

“We have around 35 families who took part and we got a great cross section from young to the eldest.

“We kept getting requests but we couldn’t get round to everyone.

Since the finished video was posted on social media on Thursday (April 30) the family has received a lot of praise, including: ‘It’s absolutely wonderful, I can’t stop watching it’ and ‘I can see kids in school watching that in 20 years. It’s a great bit of history.”

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