Children's Home

A Place for Dignity

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In Boles Texas there is a children's home called Arms of Hope. They take in single moms and their kids, and work with them to further their education, get their lives back on track. A friend of mine is a youth minister at a church that takes some kids there every summer to work, and he asked me to come along to do some video work for them. I spent a week on campus at Boles, interviewing residents, staff, and documenting some of the work the church group was doing.

I had this idea of pairing up some of the moms with some of the high school girls that were going from the church. I think that everyone has a lesson to teach, no matter where they are in life. And the moms in this program have been down roads most of us never will. They've lived through tough experiences, and as such, they know something I can learn. The youth minister picked out three high school girls, and the administration picked out three moms, and we paired them up. I interviewed them separately, and then again together.

I was very pleased with how things turned out. The girls got along with the moms great, and they had some very meaningful conversations. I remember lots of tears being shed.

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Editing

This one took about a week to edit down. Lots of hours of interviews to plow through, and some of it was heartbreaking to cut. With these sorts of projects, you want to include everything that's good, but it just doesn't work for the project. You can't deliver a forty minute video when they're wanting something closer to ten. Besides, the point of these sorts of videos is to deliver a message, an emotion. Once you've done that, you get out of the way and let the audience experience it. Any more material just clutters things up, no matter how good it is.

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“the point of these videos is deliver a message, an emotion. Once you've done that, you get out of the way”

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Delivery

The church that sent the youth group, and the children's home were both very happy with the finished video. I got to be with the moms I interviewed when they saw the video for the first time. One of them told me later that they hoped to show this to the church that they attend. Her thought was that after seeing this, maybe people would think of the moms at the home a little bit differently. I always try and make everyone that steps in front of the camera look good, but if I'm able to restore a bit of dignity to someone who's lost it... I can't think of a better use of a camera.