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Thursday, 10 July 2008 |
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Photo by Heidi Zemach Producer Charlie Gudeman talks with Rich Smith, who will be filming the library, and Alfred Marrone, who will film the local churches, for "Our Town." The documentary will be filmed Saturday. WPSU documentary "Our Town" will be filmed in Johnsonburg on Saturday. Residents will be armed with video cameras as they try and capture the spirit of "The Paper City."
By Heidi Zemach
Special to The Record
JOHNSONBURG – Johnsonburg will be abuzz with activity all day Saturday as community members armed with video cameras will film a day in the life of their town.
Beginning at 9 a.m., they will hit the streets gathering raw footage, photographs and local interviews for the WPSU Penn State Public Broadcasting documentary series Our Town.
Volunteers met with Our Town Senior Producer/Director Charlie Gudeman at the Borough building to share their thoughts on what elements should be included in the hour-long documentary. The volunteers also learned some basic tips on filming.
Volunteers ranged in age from college-aged young woman Thea Distler and her friend Nicki Oler to Lillian Finno, age 83, who has compiled a comprehensive history of Johnsonburg’s Italian community and plans to help discuss the town’s history, dressed as Mrs. Santa Claus and showcase the extensive doll collection she has donated to the library.
Gudeman filled an entire planning board with post-it notes filled with ideas that included such places as the Domtar Paper Mill, the “Brick Block,” Volunteer Fire department, the community center, library, school athletic facilities, churches, War Memorial and more. Not to be excluded, they even included the Winery at Wilcox, whose owner showed up and offered to contribute film.
Usually, when small rural towns are shown on TV, the city producers go into a town and film what they think is important, or interesting, Gudeman said. But the idea of the Our Town series is to let the town’s people who know it from the inside out tell their own town’s story. The public broadcasting station merely provides its expertise, free video tape, and then its producers who spend several months editing some 20 hours of raw video footage down to an hour containing assorted 2- to 3-minute segments on a certain topic. To link it all together, the producers interview each of the volunteers about their chosen topic for another 20 minutes on Saturday and then gather some of their own footage around town in the morning.
Important topics such as the local schools or Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts may be short on material as school is currently out, the scouts aren’t in session and some of the school authorities who volunteered will be out of town. But the Holy Rosary Church’s 38th annual festival begins Saturday that features the Army Reserve band from Richmond, Va. that is commanded by Johnsonburg native CW4 Kathleen Landas will be performing outdoors that evening. The Community Building’s coffee shop will hold a grand opening featuring local improvisation, poems and readings. |
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Last Updated ( Monday, 14 July 2008 )
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