This year I had one of my life goals achieved which was the ultimate social learning experience for me.  It was to be part of a film crew to create a short film to see the process and the work that goes behind making a film.  (Hey, next stop…Cannes!)

It was a team project where I worked with people of different ages (12-67) to shoot a film that was going to be screened as part of the Seniors Festival in our local council.

One of my ‘bucket list’ goals in my life was To Create a Legacy within my Local Community.  For a while now, I had been exploring the idea of creating a ‘Third Space” in our community, a place where locals can gather, connect, work, learn and come up with collaborative community projects however, this idea seems to have run its course.  After all, it’s a massive endeavour to run around, seek support from local government and business.  Somehow this idea seems to be bigger in my head than being able to recreate it in my local area with business and government support.  (However, our meetup group Third Place is still going strong).

So with that, I still had the niggling feeling that I wanted to be part of something big closer to home.  Something that will still be around when I’m long gone.  I didn’t know what this would look like but one day, in my Facebook feed, the answer revealed itself in the form of an intergenerational film project.  You can read about it in How Working Out Loud Inspires New Passions.

I’m sure that if I hadn’t worked out loud through my amateurish attempts at video creation and editing projects, this opportunity would never have shown itself to me.  As I had been sharing the process of my video work to friends and family across social media networks, many people had seen the same advertisement and sent the link to me telling me, “Helen, THIS is something that you should do!”

It just goes to show that sharing and showing your work means you get exposed to new opportunities but most of all, your network brings those opportunities to you as well!

Once I was selected through the application process, we were divided into our film crews and underwent weeks of film training all sponsored and supported by the City of Kingston.  You can read about it in Benefits of Working with Different Generations.

Throughout the process, I was showing and sharing my work and learning within this film crew in Learning and Working Together on an Intergenerational Film Project.

Last week we had our final screening in public.  It was an opportunity to dress up, walk the red carpet at the Shirley Burke Theatre in Parkdale and see the efforts on the big screen in front of an audience.  I proudly invited my husband and my parents who finally got to see the result of our creative endeavours.

I was so immensely proud of everyone in our film crew.  We didn’t know each other before this project and we were thrown in together to come up with a concept, write a script, plan and storyboard the shots, plan the shoot, film and edit the entire lot.  The process also challenged me in a big way – for the first time in my life, I took an acting role playing one of the protagonists.  The theme of our film was “Transitions”.  It was about a woman (me) who’s a bit crazy for her technology (okay, that bit wasn’t hard to act out) and she is helping her grandmother pack up her home to move into a retirement home.  The dialogue and scenes are all about the transition of life and the impact and the different memories we make with our loved ones.

It took us an entire day to shoot the film on location and making full use of the daylight.  Somehow, on the day, it all came together despite some initial hiccoughs.  The ultimate result was a film edited in Adobe Premier Pro by our 12-year-old camera man “genius” who knew his way around video editing software.

Although I cannot share the final product with you here (the copyright remains with the local council for 2 years) and it cannot be shown online as some of the film crews want to submit their film to short film festivals which have a stipulation that films must not be promoted before the festival, I will put this experience down to one of the best social learning experiences I’ve had in my recent years.

Sometimes, we need to take a risk and give things a go – to try our hand at something that is not usual for us as it inspires new connections, inspirations, and creativity.

As I cross off this goal in my bucket list, I’m now looking at my next items on the list.  I don’t know how I’ll handle taking these on but it does involve lots of travel, making a music video entirely on Snapchat and meeting a few people who I respect and admire for being bold and audacious in their learning too.  Let’s see how we go with these….