How to contact with the characters?
After finished the treatment about first project, I start to do some research about ordinary people dancing in Coventry. At first, I find some information about some dance classes and clubs from the websites. There has a promotional website attracted me, which is about dancing courses for adults, who want to have a fun and keep fit, hold by Coventry city council. What the greatest attraction is, there has a publicity picture which is an old woman dancing with a young man. Then I phoned the performance office of Coventry city council, it has taken me a few days (because there were always no one answered the phone and no one response my emails) then finally I’ve contacted with stuff and arranged the time to talk with the performance manager, Anne. At 6th Nov, I went to Anne’s office where is inside Finham Park School, she is very friendly and told me the specific information about these courses in the past 3 years, but the biggest problem is that if I would like to shoot some scenes in class I must get everyone’s permission, she found it is extremely difficult, because not everyone is willing to be shot, and I also need to get the person in charge of dance studios (because they are all leased school sites in Coventry), as well as the dance teacher’s permission. When I hear these cases I really feel very upset, but then Anne gave me a number of recommendations, first of all, she knew a lot of Coventry’s local public organizations, which have lots of activities about old people’s lives. Secondly, at 10th Nov, there has a good activity “fit as a fiddle” hold by Age Concern which is very fit for my theme. When I heard this news I was very exciting and asked Anne helps me to contact the relevant person in charge. She helped me to phone the head of Age Concern, Deb, and get her permission. Then I began to prepare for the 10th Nov shooting and looking forward to find the appropriate characters that day.
11 a.m., 10th Nov, city center
In the shooting day, I arrived the scene before the start of the activity, where is hold in the lower precinct, city center. Then I asked the person in charge, Deb, about the arrangement of the activity. There has divided into 4 parts, the first part is a performance of the Latin and ballroom dancing by a local dance club, “love ballroom”, which is very fit to my theme. From the started of performing, I have filmed the dancers individually, C.J., Mary and Mark. I was all taken their dancing scenes and a number of close-ups, mainly focus on their facial expression. After the show, I came up with Mary and had a conversation with them about the details of the club and arranged time to film them in their dance studio.
8 p.m., 11th Nov, dance studio
Their dance studio is quite far away from the city center and inside a hotel, at that day there were about 10 people came to the class, most of them are over 40s. But it is a pity thing that I did not get all people’s permission, so I can only film Mary and Mark when they were dancing. After the end of the class, I made a about 7-minute interview of Mary. But there was a pity that too much noise around, so can not be used in my chip. I arranged the time to go to Mary’s house and make an interview with her.
3 p.m., 16th Nov, Mary’s house
On this day I came to Mary’s house, there has a room is used for dancing in her house. I filmed the dancing room and Mary’s daily life. Then we started to do interview in the living room, mark is also in there at the same day, so I asked him the same questions as Mary did before.
