The working life of Museum of London

Stories of the World is a project by which museums all over he country are contributing to the cultural Olympiad. London: World City is the London region’s project.

The film crew in action during interviews

Some of the panellists joined Museum staff (Inclusion Officer Lucie Fitton and me – Lucy Sawyer the new Youth Programme Assistant) and a film maker from Quiet Voice Film Productions during half term to make a short film. It needed to explain what the London: World City project is, talk about exploring the theme of Place through Roman London’s legacy on our city today and encourage other young people to get involved. This was no small task.

Tom, one of the participants put it this way:

“When I walked in on the Monday morning to start the Youth Panel’s week-long project with the Museum of London to make a short film I laughed at the possibility of having a film as an end product!  A film in one week? You must be joking! Especially as after the first day we hadn’t even started a script or decided what the film was going to be about.”

Instead, we learnt about filming roles, practiced shots and generally got to know each other better.

Tuesday saw us exploring the Roman handling collection and sharing stories about objects the Junction members had brought in. The group grilled Jenny Hall (senior curator of Roman collections) and Jon Cotton (senior curator of Prehistory and Public Archaeology) on some of the finer points of the period in question and we also had the opportunity to find out more about the project from Louise Doughty (Stories of the World project manager).

Wednesday was when the group laid down the nuts and bolts of the film itself. Un-phased by the task, Tom writes that

“coolly and calmly the Youth Panel member’s got down to business”

We defined the film’s message, outline, drafted script and decided shots and even started filming.  Everyone went home exhausted!

On Thursday, our main filming day, it poured with rain. Despite this, the brave Junction panellists went out across London, filming each other and trying to get footage to cover our themes of settlement, language and religion.

Alice says that

“Myself and Vicki were set the task of getting footage on the theme of religion and belief. This began to seem like an impossible task when drenched and wandering aimlessly around Holborn we found a Buddhist centre that turned out to simply be a house. Pretty sure that we were never going to find any interesting religious buildings our luck changed when we went to a Krishna Temple. Here we were even allowed to film inside their temple and it was really interesting to learn about and experience a completely different culture”.

Friday was Tom’s highlight of the week

“It was the day that we recorded most people’s interviews to camera. We had to say set sound-bytes to camera as they were written in the script as well as respond to open questions (both of which proved surprisingly tricky and took multiple takes for all of us!). In a way I feel this was the most challenging part of the process and also the most entertaining part of the week in that it really made us work as a team and it really drew out people’s personalities and views.”

Everyone worked really hard, overcoming issues of foreign language, camera fright and interfering heart beat noises!

Alice says

“The project in general was really rewarding, especially learning about the production side of film making and how much work goes in to such a short amount of footage.”

And Tom adds that

“Overall, the project was really good fun and made me realize that everyone has a story to tell and, furthermore, these stories deserve to be told despite people’s age, background or social class. People make our city what it is today.”

We’re all excited about the end result and are hoping it will be ready to show and Junction’s first meeting in March.

Well done everyone!