Shooting exercise and update on contributors

Today I arranged to meet with my group to discuss finding contributors for the photograph film, which was identified as the favourite idea from our pitch last week.

We started by sorting out a shot list for the documentary filming exercise we are filming in Friday's seminar, choosing what video and audio recording equipment we want to use for that and for our actual film. After this Jamie informed us that, whilst his grandparents aren't wanting to be recorded for the film they are asking around their friends to see if anyone else is interested.

We will be using lapel microphone for the first time

Over the weekend I was at home in Manchester so I spoke to my granddad about whether he would be willing to talk about any photographs he has from when he was younger, as I was told that he has some of him riding his bike in races and when he was in the RAF. My grandma also has a photo of her working in a metal-work factory during the war which was put in the newspaper which might be an option too.

However, for the main film we are looking for contributors that we can include whilst writing the treatment. After last week's discussions about groups to approach, I raised the SheffieldHelpYourself website again with my group, which has a section for older people and sub-sections for social clubs, leisure and sports activities. We felt these would be ideal to get a range of people and stories and might better lead to us filming in their homes if they agree to be a part of the film.

For the rest of the meeting we went through the site and noted down a few potentials to contact, agreeing among us that we would each contact at least two over the next week and would communicate between ourselves to avoid the mistake of contacting people more than once. We also created a rough phone script to deliver telling them about our film, our intentions at the moment and any other details we thought necessary to include.

Although in early talks we thought about trying to find people of different ages and generations, after initial research I found it was much more difficult to get in touch with them, outside of youth clubs and word-of-mouth by our own family members. We also thought that older people would have more interesting stories to tell, would be more willing to be a part of the film, and that there was something special about showing them with a physical photograph and the difference in age if taken long ago. As a result we've narrowed our focus to finding older people, and then if possible through them perhaps contacting different generations within their family to add another dimension to the film.