November 25 2018–Films and Quizzes

Earlier in November I received an email from Harri who is studying at the University for Creative Arts (UCA), Farnham

"We have been given a brief to create a 10 minute documentary, and my group wanted to document the community between trans individuals. As a trans student myself, this topic is close to my heart.
I was wondering if your organisation would be open to being the subject of our documentary? Or perhaps if you know of individual members who would be open to discussing the trans community?"

"As we are focusing on community, it'd be lovely to explore the relationships Surrey Swans builds and how it has helped individuals. We would love to conduct interviews with any member who would be happy to be filmed.
We'd also be exploring how people experience the difference between a tight-knit trans community such as Surrey Swans, and also the trans community as a wider concept."

We had a brief get-together at the Lion Brewery on Thursday 22nd November. A chance to meet the people that would be creating the documentary, a look at the kind of questions that might get included in interviews and to talk a bit about Surrey Swans, what it means to me, to some of the people that I know. And a bit about relationships in general.

So, on Sunday 25 November 2018 we had six visitors from UCA. Nate, Harri, Alex,Terrell, Evie, Elisha.

They arrived at about 6:30 pm to set things up.

I arrived at about 7:15 pm as setting up was nearing completion.

I have a chat with Elisha, who’ll be asking the questions, as the final bits and pieces of preparation are done.

Of course, if everything always went hitch-free first time there’s be no point at all in practicing anything or learning to do new stuff.

The hitch is with the microphone. A large submarine-looking thing which seems intent upon misbehaving.

It’s impressive that there are no visible signs of panic.

A backup plan kicks in … or perhaps it was put together on the spur of the moment. It involves moving outside and using an alternate microphone.

In fact, “inside” is a little on the noisy side, so moving outside is a good idea anyway.

The main challenge is that it is November 25th. Which means that it’s a little on the chilly side.

Volunteers are interviewed and filming (I guess that should be videoing since no film is in sight) proceeds through the evening.

Here’s how it looked:

Nate, Harri, Alex,Terrell

Evie, Elisha,

The evening was really very enjoyable and we’re looking forwards to seeing the finished product. Nate, Harri, Alex,Terrell, Evie, Elisha were fantastic, getting things done efficiently and without imposing at all on other things that were happening during the evening.

We did have a visit from UCA back in November 2013 … you can read all about that here.

On a different note, since November 2016 people who come along to Surrey Swans have gotten involved in quiz evenings organised by people at St Mary’s Church in Ash Vale. I wasn’t able to get along to it, but a team of 6 swans plus 2 friends did and they came third. So no longer is it true for us that “the only way is up” :). They had a great time.