Introducing One For Ten - ten stories of death row exonerees

For every 10 people executed in the US, one death row inmate is released after being found innocent. These exonerees have spent an average of 10 years on death row.

I've been making films about the death penalty for some time now, and this statistic really jumped out at me. With my colleague Mark, we got to thinking that a one in 10 failure rate for anything is unacceptable, let alone sentencing people to the ultimate punishment.

Around the same time, we'd been looking for ways to turn traditional documentary filmmaking on its head - we wanted to find a new way of producing social issue films that would allow people to engage with them, rather than just watching them. In the past, we'd both been frustrated that we'd make content for broadcast on TV, the Cinema and the radio and it was always a one-way transaction that completely disappeared as soon as the credits rolled. Even now with the internet, people can get in touch and let you know what they think of your projects, but we've never worked on one where you - the viewers - are able to help shape the project as it happens.

We decided to try something new. Through our work on the death penalty we knew that there were loads of amazing stories out there that had to be told. 

So we hatched a plan. We thought that if we made 10 films about 10 exonerees and made them as 'live' as possible, filming in one day, editing the next and uploading that night, we could inform them about the topic and engage with our audience as we went. The result is One For Ten, a project that gives us the level of interactivity we were looking for - allowing the audience to ask the questions, shape each film and turn the production process 'democratic'. 

That was 18 months ago. Now we're getting ready to head out filming in April and May of 2013. Along the way, our idea has matured and we've recorded a pilot to give you a taster of the project with exoneree Ray Krone, introduced by Danny Glover.

Help us shape One For Ten

As we get ready to start the project, we're looking to build the community around these incredible stories. To get involved in shaping our films, friend us on Facebook and Twitter and share this with anyone you think might be interested. And thanks to Amnesty we'll continue to blog here as One For Ten gets going, and we'll let you know more about what's happening.

You will be the driving force behind these films. You will be the ones to view them, the ones to react to them, share them and ask the questions of our interviewees. Without you, we're on our own!

One For Ten will be launched with a week long death row inspired art exhibit and series of events at Vibe Bar on Brick Lane from the 31st of January till the 6th of February. To celebrate, join us at our launch event on Thursday the 31st of January from 6.30pm.