Today we went to the Lowedges Friendship Group to speak to the contacts we made last week about their potential contribution to the film. After getting contact details from them, I rang each of them up over the weekend to ask if they could find and bring in the photographs that they mentioned for today's session.
Unfortunately, only one of the five had something to show us, as the others couldn't for various reasons - either not being able to find them, not having enough time to find them or being an issue with getting the photos off someone else who is in them and doesn't want them used. Also, Ralph - who we spoke to last week and who had interesting stories to tell about the war - was ill, but still might be a possibility as a contributor.
Bob, who Jamie spoke to last week, had brought in his laptop full of old photographs for us to look at. I sat with him for an hour looking through them. Most of the photos seemed to be about local history, and although he explained at length about them, they were unsuitable for our film which focuses on personal memories. However, a few of them stuck out as potentials for the film, such as one of a street party during VE day and one of the old Sheffield markets (which many seem to be quite emotive about).
As he passed through the hundreds of photos he mentioned that he had an electronics shop and that he paints as a hobby too. To try and keep focused on the personal memories and photos that tell a life, I asked more about this to which he began to speak about his interest in electronics from an early age (building simple radios), how he did badly in school as the teachers were in the war, but how he was determined to continue with it and ended up opening a shop. I had mentioned to him previously about our intentions to film in people's homes and he gave me his address, but I will have to clarify this with him at some point to see if he is comfortable talking to us on film.
Another issue is the fact that the photos are only digital, and we wouldn't be able to view the originals placed around the home as we had intended to film. One option for us is to print off the scans he had made on to photography paper with his permission, but whether this would work we do not know, and we may have to compromise.
We had initially planned for this meeting to be the next step towards filming them next week in their homes, with this session looking at the photographs they have so that we can prepare questions and discern which stories we want them to elaborate on. However, with this set-back we will be relying heavily on the contributors we get from the groups we are meeting tomorrow and Thursday, and we may have to decide between doing the same and attending next week's session or filming without knowing what photographs they have. Jamie is still in the process of talking to his gran's friends about their potential involvement too.
In tomorrow's session we will make sure that those we speak to understand our intentions for the project including what type of photographs/memories to share - less historical fact and more personal and anecdotal.
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