Loved Lived is a collaborative project which captures the images and stories of an older generation on the subject of love. Each of the participants in the project are over the age of the 70 with a lifetime of experience to reflect on what love has meant to them. The project was produced in association with the national charity Contact the Elderly.
Background to the Love Lived Project
Holly Wren, a long time Bold Content collaborator, contacted our MD Adam Neale and asked whether he would be interested in becoming involved with the Love Loved project. While Adam was excited about getting on board it came at an extremely busy time for Bold Content Video. None the less time was made for the videos.
Filming on Love Lived Begins
The subjects for the video had been selected by the charity Contact the Elderly, and so we were confident that theirs would be good stories and that they would be willing to talk on camera. From those that were willing to volunteer their time we chose the subjects whose stories we felt would be the most compelling. Each of the subjects selected had fascinating stories as you might expect of seventy five years plus of life and each approached the subject of romantic love from a unique viewpoint.
Filming took place in each of the subjects homes. One of the nicest things about the project was how welcoming these older people were in opening up their home and telling their thoughts and feelings about love to a complete stranger. In the videos the subjects freely discuss a subject which we all have had experience. The appeal of the videos possibly can be found in the fact that there is a kind of collective unconscious which they tap into. Some of the subjects of the videos go extremely deep with their experiences of love and their feelings of love.
As you might expect given the age of the participants several of those interviewed had recently lost people in the last five to ten years. Consequently the wounds of this lost were still quite fresh. Still, the subjects opened up to us and told us about their feelings of what it was like to have lost their partners. The resulting footage is often heart wrenching but also the most compelling of these videos.
Choosing a Style for the Love Lived Videos
Filming took place between November and December of 2015 and then edited shortly thereafter. As a corporate filmmaking
company we are usually working to a client’s brief. On this project these was no such brief. With no boxes to tick we could have filmed the videos however we wished using multiple cameras, green screen or other stylistic choice. Instead it was decided to go extremely simple with a pure talking head style video.
The videos were shot on a locked off tripod with some of the shots quite close up on the people’s faces as they described their thoughts and feelings. The overall aesthetic was stripped down and pared back so that they filmmaking didn’t get in the way of the stories.
This genuine and authentic approach allowed us to fully concentrating on asking the right questions to get to the heart of the content without having to worry about framing or capturing the right shots. At the same time we made sure to use relevant cutaways throughout the video.
The Result of the Love Lived Videos
The documentary videos and the photographs will be showcased at Broadgate Tower from January 10th to June 10th.
One of the most interesting aspects of the project is how preconceptions of the people based on their photos are challenged once you watch the videos. Visit the link below to view the photos and videos for yourself and see how your own assumptions are changed once you listen to a lifetime reflections on love.
