I continued to browse the 'SheffieldHelpYourself' website which became a useful resource for finding out about smaller projects tackling issues in the community. National news sites such as The Guardian and BBC News were also helpful, particularly because I can search for a particular location or browse a sub-section like 'Society' or 'Volunteering'. I also looked on regional news websites such as Sheffield Star, Sheffield Telegraph - and those more further afield such as the Manchester Evening News and Yorkshire Evening Post.
With the knowledge that we would have to create a poetic documentary with thematic or topical links to the subject, I filtered out many of the stories immediately which I felt would be difficult to suit the form. Some news stories about particular individuals I also avoided due to the risk of having the project hinging on one subject, and for the variety of content we want to include.
I booked a meeting room and we met up yesterday to discuss any new ideas and choose our strongest to take forward. The first new idea I shared was about a story I had read on The Guardian's website about many of Sheffield's libraries having to be handed over to volunteers following £230m cuts to the council's spending.
This emerged as one of our favourite ideas because of ideas for content: opinions from passionate volunteers, interviews with local authorities and filming inside libraries. We also discussed ideas for a poetic approach, which might include voice-overs of people reading their favourite passages and asking the question of the importance of books.
The next new idea I brought was about the 'Friends of the Earth' environmental campaigning group, which is marking its 40th anniversary in a week or so. I saw them on the SheffieldHelpYourself website but then found an article about their impact in the Sheffield Telegraph, which gave ideas for content such as archive footage from their protests. However, after looking at their website I couldn't gauge whether they would be doing any more marches or protests through the time when we would be filming - which we felt would be important to cover the story satisfactorily.
The last new idea I shared was about a creative writing group for coma/brain injury sufferers, called 'The Write Way', which was set up by a PhD at Sheffield University a couple of years ago. By looking at their webpage, it appears that the group's founder is trying to roll out the program nationwide, and an anthology of their work was recently released over the summer. What drew me to this as an idea for our film is the possibility of using their poetry and literature for the poetic exercise, and the creative potential of representing coma/brain injury through audio and video.
When discussing the idea, our main concerns around this idea were that the group itself is quite small, the approach to a personal and emotive subject, and the opportunity for content outside of interviews or filming at their regular workshops. However, with the strong links to other 'external agencies' and with clearly a very passionate, knowledgeable and supportive group leader, I think this is still a strong option to pursue.
As another idea, Jamie raised the issue of a string of shops on Devonshire Street which may be knocked down to make way for new buildings - raised by local band 'Drenge' on their website. Initially this seemed like a great idea, as a number of independent shops and pubs have a long history on the street, and we could envisage emotive interviews with them. That said, we ended up discarding this idea due to the simple fact that the plan to demolish the buildings is not confirmed yet, and probably won't happen whilst we are set to film - a part of the story we don't think we can exclude.
After this we went through our favourite ideas from the last meet-up, and thought about how we could approach each subject.
For the dementia music groups we felt that it had great potential for poetry, but we would have to be careful about our approach and style for it not to look like a news segment. I shared the documentary 'Alive Inside' with the rest of the group, the film that had inspired me to look further into the topic. Another concern would be that we wouldn't want to simply imitate that film, which covers a lot of topics around the disease such as nursing homes, medication and brain science.
We discussed the idea surrounding the disconnect between youth and politics, which we all thought was strong. The challenge with this would be to maintain a focus on youth and not get lost in the politics of the Scottish Referendum or the upcoming 2015 election. Bias is also something we would have to consider as we could be interviewing students with a strong political affiliation and also the articles leading us to the story are very much anti-liberal. However, if we find this to be a general consensus among young people then we could change our angle of approach to the topic.
A concept we had discussed initially but had abandoned was that of dreams. We thought about the ways in which we could approach the subject for the film, which would be well suited to poetic documentary but may lack focus outside that form. Jamie had the idea of perhaps recording our dreams over a few weeks, reconstructing some of the most bizarre ones or having someone else tell us about theirs, with an experimental approach to style. We decided to keep the idea mainly out of our fascination with it and our wish to find some kind of approach to the longer film.
Another more abstract approach to the project which I suggested last time was that of exploring the last photograph or memory of someone - and the complex feelings people hold towards it. This was brought up in discussion by talking about the WWI centenary and the photos of soldiers being re-enacted, and so we thought about different approaches to it. One interesting suggestion involved us even creating the last photograph for someone - Saul highlighted a link to the film 'The Act of Killing' - but this would depend so much on researching and finding a subject for the film.
Overall, we were left with 8 ideas to bring to our group tutorial on Thursday, with our 3-4 strongest being...
- Alzheimer's/Dementia music group
- Sheffield libraries ran by volunteers
- 'The Write Way' creative writing group for coma/brain injury sufferers
- Youth and politics disconnect
Once these ideas are narrowed down to the two we will be sharing with the rest of our group, we will begin identify areas for further research, stylistic considerations and contacts to strengthen our pitch.
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