Project: Jenny B. Update 02
This past week I got about 2/5 of my documentary on Jenny finished. Just to recap, the documentary is about the work of a woman named Jenny that lives here in Savannah who is a social worker with Candler SOURCE (Service Option Using Resources in Community Environments). She works with some of the poorest of the poor in and around Savannah, Georgia who need social work assistance in order to raise their quality of life by involving them in their community around them and vice versa. Aside from social work she also plays the trumpet in our church choir and sings in a local folk band. She has Apert Syndrom and deals with physical handicaps yet still rises to the top when it comes to her work, play, and just life in general. Overall, she is an amazing woman.
Super quick update: About half of the film is shot... still to go: interviews with Jenny and the family, recording of a church service, Jenny's commentary on a few things, her band performing at the Oceanic Film Festival here in Savannah and some more of her out on the job.
Today, Hawk (director of photography) and I (director and producer) met Jenny at her office at the Georgia Infermary and prepared to go out to "the country" to meet some of her "country casses". We were blessed to have her new volunteers from the Mercy Volunteer Corps there along for the ride. The volunteers are giving up a year of their every day lives to serve this social outreach group that Jenny is a part of. They just started the one year program and today was their first day on the job! Usually the volunteers are people who have just graduated college and are looking for service work to do in their field of study or for personal reasons. This year, however, Jenny was assigned two wonderful retirees who are married and both thought that giving a year of their lives to volunteer in the Mercy Volunteer Corps would be a great way to kick off their retirement. I found out later that this year they have been married for 40 years! They were very welcoming and inviting and I am sure that they will be perfect for the job. It's always interesting to me when an "outsider" can come off as the most inviting in a group of "insiders". You know you are dealing with a special person when this happens. I try to be the same way. I really hope that someday I can be as warm and welcoming as they were to me today.
So today we met everyone and then basically drove 45 minutes to the sticks where we went on one of Jenny's house calls with her. The people that we were visiting lived in a giant moble home out in the country, just as Jenny said, and they were also super inviting. Jenny made her rounds to the many people there and we got to shortly meet every one of them. What extrordinary people. They live pretty far from the city yet they were troopers! One of the eldest ones had just finished with Chemo therapy and some of the other ones had ailments just as bad. All the same there they were just rollin along, happy to talk and get to know us. They were some of the easiest people to film! Usually people freak out or are all about being infront of the camera. These people just let us do our thing and were so natural about it. I really enjoyed the short time that we spent with them and we are thinking about going back to take a few protraits of them for the film. It would be pretty nice to get a follow-up visit on tape anyway.
On the drive back, Hawk and I stopped a ton of places to get "country footage". I figure we could use it as some transitional material for the film. We couldn't film out of the moving car due to the ever-changing SCAD policy about vehicles and films being used as projects for school (rule: NO RUNNING or MOVING VEHICLES of ANY KIND at all) so we had to actually pull over and set up and pan and well, do whatever looked ok. We shot everything from cows (who didn't like me at all) to goats to old houses and trailers to the typical Effingham County thing: semi trucks chillin in people's yards and yellowing corn stalks against the green kudzue forrests. No joke, ALL of the corn husks that we saw were about 2 feet taller than Hawk. Lets be reminded right now that Hawk is like 6'5". I haven never seen Corn that tall... Hawk seemed to think it was no big thing. haha.
-----------ok this post is now going from an update on the Jenny Documentary to a reflection about how freaked out I am that I am actually starting to enjoy living in the *gasp* South *gasp*.
It's scarry, the more I get to go out to the country around Savannah, the more I like it. I guess what I mean by that is I am starting to actually LIKE the South. After living here for 3 years I am actually starting to like it. Do I like it enought to stay in Savannah, probably not... my eyes are still set on Park City, Utah... but I will for sure enjoy the time that I have left here. Good old Jenny and everyone else who is actually making a difference down here. I have good friends.
These thoughts about actually liking the South make me laugh. I have a friend who has invited me to come hang out with him in Alabama before I move out to Utah this winter... sometime in LATE November or Early December. I'm sure it won't be perfectly nice and temperate like it would be a little earlier in the year there but when he first asked me to come some months ago I told him I'd think about it because yes, I would love to see where he is from and hang out with him away from school and work and all that but at the same time I was shrugging my shoulders at the idea of ever going to Alabama. HAHA. How Michigan of me, right? Anyway, as I learn more about the good side of the South I find myself more and more excited to learn about the OTHER kinds of Southern Comfort out there. I hope I can make it out to Alabama... I think I might actually like it.
Don't worry folks, I still say things like "aboot", "pop", and "you guys", I still don't say things like "yaw" and I crave a big snowfall every day but there is a certain charm to the backwoods of Georgia and, more and more, I'm learning to appreciate em'. (even though it WAS 99 degrees out and the humidity meter thing said it should be raining but instead the rain just stayed in the atmosphere and we all mistaked it for AIR and oh yea did I mention that it is so hot and humid out that the puddles from the rainfall 2 weeks ago are STILL ON THE GROUND)
I take it all back.. I hate Georgia ;)
Super quick update: About half of the film is shot... still to go: interviews with Jenny and the family, recording of a church service, Jenny's commentary on a few things, her band performing at the Oceanic Film Festival here in Savannah and some more of her out on the job.
Today, Hawk (director of photography) and I (director and producer) met Jenny at her office at the Georgia Infermary and prepared to go out to "the country" to meet some of her "country casses". We were blessed to have her new volunteers from the Mercy Volunteer Corps there along for the ride. The volunteers are giving up a year of their every day lives to serve this social outreach group that Jenny is a part of. They just started the one year program and today was their first day on the job! Usually the volunteers are people who have just graduated college and are looking for service work to do in their field of study or for personal reasons. This year, however, Jenny was assigned two wonderful retirees who are married and both thought that giving a year of their lives to volunteer in the Mercy Volunteer Corps would be a great way to kick off their retirement. I found out later that this year they have been married for 40 years! They were very welcoming and inviting and I am sure that they will be perfect for the job. It's always interesting to me when an "outsider" can come off as the most inviting in a group of "insiders". You know you are dealing with a special person when this happens. I try to be the same way. I really hope that someday I can be as warm and welcoming as they were to me today.
So today we met everyone and then basically drove 45 minutes to the sticks where we went on one of Jenny's house calls with her. The people that we were visiting lived in a giant moble home out in the country, just as Jenny said, and they were also super inviting. Jenny made her rounds to the many people there and we got to shortly meet every one of them. What extrordinary people. They live pretty far from the city yet they were troopers! One of the eldest ones had just finished with Chemo therapy and some of the other ones had ailments just as bad. All the same there they were just rollin along, happy to talk and get to know us. They were some of the easiest people to film! Usually people freak out or are all about being infront of the camera. These people just let us do our thing and were so natural about it. I really enjoyed the short time that we spent with them and we are thinking about going back to take a few protraits of them for the film. It would be pretty nice to get a follow-up visit on tape anyway.
On the drive back, Hawk and I stopped a ton of places to get "country footage". I figure we could use it as some transitional material for the film. We couldn't film out of the moving car due to the ever-changing SCAD policy about vehicles and films being used as projects for school (rule: NO RUNNING or MOVING VEHICLES of ANY KIND at all) so we had to actually pull over and set up and pan and well, do whatever looked ok. We shot everything from cows (who didn't like me at all) to goats to old houses and trailers to the typical Effingham County thing: semi trucks chillin in people's yards and yellowing corn stalks against the green kudzue forrests. No joke, ALL of the corn husks that we saw were about 2 feet taller than Hawk. Lets be reminded right now that Hawk is like 6'5". I haven never seen Corn that tall... Hawk seemed to think it was no big thing. haha.
-----------ok this post is now going from an update on the Jenny Documentary to a reflection about how freaked out I am that I am actually starting to enjoy living in the *gasp* South *gasp*.
It's scarry, the more I get to go out to the country around Savannah, the more I like it. I guess what I mean by that is I am starting to actually LIKE the South. After living here for 3 years I am actually starting to like it. Do I like it enought to stay in Savannah, probably not... my eyes are still set on Park City, Utah... but I will for sure enjoy the time that I have left here. Good old Jenny and everyone else who is actually making a difference down here. I have good friends.
These thoughts about actually liking the South make me laugh. I have a friend who has invited me to come hang out with him in Alabama before I move out to Utah this winter... sometime in LATE November or Early December. I'm sure it won't be perfectly nice and temperate like it would be a little earlier in the year there but when he first asked me to come some months ago I told him I'd think about it because yes, I would love to see where he is from and hang out with him away from school and work and all that but at the same time I was shrugging my shoulders at the idea of ever going to Alabama. HAHA. How Michigan of me, right? Anyway, as I learn more about the good side of the South I find myself more and more excited to learn about the OTHER kinds of Southern Comfort out there. I hope I can make it out to Alabama... I think I might actually like it.
Don't worry folks, I still say things like "aboot", "pop", and "you guys", I still don't say things like "yaw" and I crave a big snowfall every day but there is a certain charm to the backwoods of Georgia and, more and more, I'm learning to appreciate em'. (even though it WAS 99 degrees out and the humidity meter thing said it should be raining but instead the rain just stayed in the atmosphere and we all mistaked it for AIR and oh yea did I mention that it is so hot and humid out that the puddles from the rainfall 2 weeks ago are STILL ON THE GROUND)
I take it all back.. I hate Georgia ;)
posted by Chelsea at 7:51 PM
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