Video Biography Project In Mississippi

From February 2, 2009

This past weekend Isabelle and I flew to Northern Mississippi to work with a new client on creating a tribute video biography. It was a really fun, albeit short trip but we managed to cram a lot into two days.

We flew a commercial airline from Houston to Jackson Mississippi on Saturday where our client picked us up in his private plane and flew us another half hour to a smaller airport in the Northern part of the state. Isabelle was a bit nervous about being in such a small (four seater) plane so we strapped her in the backseat and I got to ride in the front. Our client was a very experienced pilot and explained all the instrumentation and flying procedures to me during the short flight. Isabelle breathed a sigh of relief when we landed and said she would be game for the front seat on the return flight.

When we arrived we got right to work. There were several family members in town for our visit and we quickly set up a shoot location in the house, creating a great backdrop, setting up lighting and going over the sequence of interview questions and shooting directions with all of the video participants. We didn’t have as much time to get familiar with our subjects as I normally prefer but that is part of working with people out of town and I have a few techniques for creating relatedness that are useful. We got some great footage and called it a day around 10 PM.

We woke at 7 the next morning and were greeted by a breakfast of famous local sausage and biscuits with hot coffee. I was already humming the lyrics to Bob Wills’ “That’s What I Like About The South” when we jumped in the car and headed north to another small town to interview the family matriarch, passing cotton fields and farms along the way.

Our clients, The Mississippi Family, were part of five generations that had inhabited this corner of the state. Their reach extended to farming, medicine,retail and industrial, as well as politics. As the sons told us, at one point, half the town was related and you couldn’t get away with much without someone seeing you. I found myself seeing a way of life that no longer exists for most of us. A family dynasty where the kids, grandkids and great-grandkids stayed local, carrying out the family name and the family businesses. They were invested in the region and in it’s perpetual growth. But they too were aware that the dynamics were changing. The church now had a new minister and many of the congregants were strangers. Large businesses were leaving and the future of the area was still to be determined. I felt like I was in a modern-day version of Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life”.

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