Its Been a Busy Week

This week found me, my wife and my cinematographer Brian Macaione in Savannah, GE, shooting interviews for our documentary Blivits!  We were there from Tuesday to Sunday and during that time we collected over 6 hours of material, almost all of which are direct interviews with some of the surviving crew of the USS Randolph, a retired aircraft carrier in the United States Navy.  The sailors were gracious and humble in a way that was refreshing in a time of "look at me" facebook, twitter, and ah-hem-blogging.  I was alittle surprised to have the sailors be so appreciative of the job that we were doing in capturing their stories, but that probably means that we are on the right track to being a fruitful member of our community.

The importance of the work was reinforced to me this week, as the Randolph Association absorbed the 9 surviving almuni of a mine sweeper named the USS Terror.  That ship had for a short while be a part of the aircraft carrier group's auxiliary compliment.  The Terror had a reunion committee of their own, until this year, but with their numbers dwindling, they joined the Randolph Association.  I was lucky enough to speak with some of the crew of the Terror, and I found that their experiences lived up to the ships moniker.  In the same wave of attacks that saw the Randolph take a kamikaze hit in her flight deck, so too did the Terror.  This ship was less than a quarter of the Randolph's size and when the  she took the direct hit, they lost about a quarter of their crew.  The entire aircraft carrier group was under attack.  This story reminded me of my original idea, that every ship in the Navy has a story to tell, and we would do well to listen.

In both cases I have been able to interview about 25% of the ship’s alumni.  I spoke with three of the Terror’s nine sailors and around 23 of the Randolph’s 99 members.  These sailors varied in age from around 90 to around 60, and their jobs were as diverse as their ages.  I talked to a baker, a medic, one of the Randolph's official photographers, a machine shop worker, a boatswain, a couple of pilots, and a couple of electricians.

More selfishly, I got an plethora of information about what magazines they read, and how they find out about the events that they would like to attend or not.  I also will be included in the quarterly newsletter that the Randolph Association circulates to all of their members.  The executive committee of the group explained that they had a bunch of questions about how to track the progress of the movie, and how to stay involved with me and my making the film.  I suggested involving their families to show them how to see our website and how to keep track of our facebook pages.  I also promised them a copy of their whole interview to be delivered to them in the mail by Christmas.  They will have one copy for themselves but they will also be sent a second copy to share with whomever they choose and of course, each DVD has the website information on it.  So all in all, I think I had a pretty successful trip.