Pitch Notes

Im looking to make a documentary focused around an elderly couple who attend tea dances. The main ideas I want to explore within the film are to do with love and relationships the staging being the tea dances that the couple attends.

Documentary – direct cinema/cinema verite/observational

Albert maysles – grey gardens – iris

Envisage it as being slow paced and gathering a small amount of momentum nothing overtly quick

Soft pastille style color temperature

Potentially working on my own/with one other person due to the intrusive nature of the film. As I want to film in their house and spend a lot of time with them mostly using lightweight portable equipment (natural lighting, without tripods etc.) this is in hope of trying to allow them to be as comfortable and uninterrupted as possible.

I want to explore their relationship, how they met, where they met, how they’ve stayed together over such a long period of time.

 Essentially the film will be a love story about a real couple. Aiming to understand the struggles of age whilst not taking that into focus.

Locations

Sheffield town hall

On Tuesdays we welcome Alf Evans who will play LIVE MUSIC, on Thursdays Aubrey Robinson brings his LIVE MUSIC Sheffield.

Appealing due to the use of live music which will allow for further footage and a nice scale to work into the film.

Saturdays the biggest dance with highest attendance no live music but also no breaks.

Rochdale tea dance hosted by Neil gibbons who I spoke to and interviewed previously as part of my r&d unit is incredibly helpful and during conversations has mentioned that he believes he is aware of a few couples who a) might be interested and b) are quite interesting characters.

I am going to be attending one or two of these a week starting by attending with my grandma who used to go regularly and then start begin to go by myself with a camera once I have attained the necessary permissions. Following this I aim to start talking to and building a friendship with some of the participants then hopefully some of them will be willing to get involved.

The film isn’t about the spectacular or anything incredible just a nice slow honest film about growing old together.

These are some of the notes i have made for the pitch we have coming up.