The Silverville Diaries: When and where to be

One of the hardest jobs of filming observational documentaries is making sure you are in the right place at the right time. Unlike dramas and archive documentaries things cannot be planned and scripted in the same way. It is real life we are filming so we have to react to what happens rather than dictate it.

With so many people living in this village, all of them old needless to say, staying on top of their lives proved quite a challenge. Being the senior side of the spectrum of life not many had mobile phones, such a beneficial way of staying in touch with people these days. E-mail is also another system of communication that was not an option as many did not have e-mail addresses and those that did possess them did not check them to the same degree the younger generation do. They certainly struggled to grasp the fact I could check mine on my mobile.

All this meant we had to return to good old fashioned conversation and this is partly the reason why it was so good to live there. Although conversations would take longer to garner the information required I found it refreshing to meet and greet people face-to-face, something that is getting rarer and rarer in modern society. Besides when you did speak to a resident on a mobile it would normally involve both of you speaking at high volume as they struggled to grasp how to hold these new found devices.

We need to be across 30-odd people’s lives during the filming period making sure we don’t miss any developments but also, be on top of all other developments in the village in case any new story lines develop. Of course it is inevitable that we would miss things, naturally people would forget to inform us of things and that is not just those with Alzheimers.

In these situations you need to film around these events so you get the information in a way that is palatable to the viewer. Once I saw a resident one day but not the next. I visited him the day after to discover his cat had passed away which was of huge significance to his story. In these cases you are extremely annoyed but have to remember there is nothing you can do and just do the best you can.

During some days we would just walk around apartments and the village having conversations with residents, sitting in the café in the day and the bar at night. Once we knew what people were featuring we could schedule in specific filming events for the week, avoiding clashes, and in the free time just film events unfolding. Although you can plan, events and situations would arise unexpectedly or things would happen simultaneously. Someone might just casually mention they are on their way to an event or - in the extreme - might suddenly fall ill and go to hospital.

At these times you have to make judgment calls as to what you need to film which is relevant to the story of the person’s life you are trying to tell. Ultimately it comes down to priorities and sometimes you make the right call and others you don’t. The trick is to make the right calls more often than not.

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Discover more about the people and the series: Silverville