TAG | fun
Just a fun note from the day: a couple celebrates their 60th wedding anniversary by being treated to the same price as their night stay at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York on the night of their honeymoon.
Here’s a nice, fun mix of young and old for all of you Michael Jackson fans out there!
I have no interest in belittling seniors or playing into stereotype of marginalizing them, but I feel the following joke that was forwarded to me by a family friend resonates as truthful:
A group of 40 year old buddies discussed where they should meet for dinner.
Finally it was agreed upon that they should meet at the Ocean View restaurant because the waitress’s there had low cut blouses and were very young.
10 years later at 50 years of age, the group once again discussed where they should meet for dinner. Finally it was agreed that they should meet at the Ocean View restaurant because the food there was very good and the wine selection was good also.
10 years later at 60 years of age, the group once again discussed where they should meet for dinner. Finally it was agreed that they should meet at the Ocean View restaurant because they could eat there in peace and quiet and the restaurant had a beautiful view of the ocean.
10 years later, at 70 years of age, the group once again discussed where they should meet for dinner. Finally it was agreed that they should meet at the Ocean View restaurant because the restaurant was wheel chair accessible and they even had an elevator.
10 years later, at 80 years of age, the group once again discussed where they should meet for dinner. Finally it was agreed that they should meet at the Ocean View restaurant because they had never been there before.
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Baby Boomers and Seniors Take Social Media by Storm
Comments | Posted by Jared Scheib in Topical Links
In an article at Mashable, a social media news site, they reported that in 2009, whereas Millennials (Ashley and my generation) maintained the same levels of internet/social media (Facebook) site engagement, only increasing by 1% of the demographic, Baby Boomers and Seniors led the pack far and away, with a gigantic 47% of Baby Boomers now maintaining a social media web profile, 73% of those on Facebook. And, of all of the Seniors (older than baby boomers, and the subjects of our documentary) using social media on the internet, 90% are on Facebook. Check out the article for more here: http://mashable.com/2010/01/28/baby-boomers-social-media/.
Do you use any social media sites, such as Facebook? If you’re a Baby Boomer or at least older than us Millennials, how have you found the experience? If you’re a digital native (most Millennials pretty much are – we grew up with the internet for a good enough chunk of our lives for it to be a natural/native thing), how has it been having your family, parents, grandparents, etc. join Facebook and find you in the social media realm? Personally, I’ve discouraged my parents from joining, not because I would care if I were friends with them, but I don’t think they’d get anything out of it. But a few of their friends have friended me on Facebook, which is fine with me; I just warn each of them: “What you are about to experience may shock you.” 
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Retirement Community Comic from Abstruse Goose
Comments | Posted by Jared Scheib in Topical Links
Self-explanatory: click here for the comic. Sometimes, life inside of a retirement community does take you back to your high school days.
Ceil and Dorothy told us not too long ago of a major spat they got into with another resident at TVN who accused them of stealing her seat at BINGO. In character, and to put it nicely, let’s just say Ceil told her no. “You’re in my seat!” I remember saying that way back when. Guess I’d better get ready to start saying it again in about 60 years.
As summarized in a recent article from the Dallas Morning News, seniors are getting online. The Baby Boomer demographic saw the greatest percentage increase in online use since 2005, from about 25% to 45%, and as they get online more and more into retirement communities and become “seniors”, the use of the internet and social media is only going to keep growing. The article talks about communities in Dallas that are getting their residents onto the web. As you may know, for instance, one of our main characters, Sam, is on Facebook. Whenever we talk about it, he says, “I get on Facebook, but I have no clue what I’m doing on it!” Of course, that joke is betrayed by the fact that every now and again he writes on my wall and sends me a message. Did you see the video of us helping Sam sign up for Facebook?
We don’t have any showgirls in our film, but this woman is worth noting. 85 years old and still dancing in the Palm Spring Follies!
Last night (June 25) Jared and I hosted a small preview screening at TVN for the residents. No, this was not of the feature film, we are very far away from that glorious moment! Let me back up a bit: essentially, we have had to reconsider a more realistic timeline for editing all 215 hours of our footage into a feature film. Meanwhile, we also had all of the residents at TVN asking us every waking moment while we were there, “Kids, when is this thing going to be ready?” “How much longer?” “When do we get to see the film?” “When do I get my star on Hollywood Blvd?”
We couldn’t help but be honest with them: the editing process will take quite a long time. But, to assuage and satiate the residents–to give them something–Jared and I decided to continue with filming more “Old Stories.” What is “Old Stories?” Old Stories started when we submitted to Project: Direct back in December 2008. Since then, the concept has grown and evolved into us literally going from apartment to apartment, filming for 20 minutes gathering up stories from someone’s past, and editing their stories into a very short, (1-2min in length), punchy, entertaining, and consumable little film. We accumulated about 15 stories for the screening, and so
, we showed them to the residents! Everybody was quite pleased and we had a very strong positive reaction to the material. They even forgave us for being late (we ran into some technical obstacles at the very last minute, of course these things always happen the day of!)!
I encourage everyone to check out the Old Stories series! You can find them in the blog’s archives and on our YouTube channel — just look for the Old Stories playlist. There are some hilarious stories!
And, this is officially my last week in Texas…for a while! I am leaving on June 30 to return to my home in Bend, Oregon for producing while Jared remains in Texas to edit. It has been a incredible 7 mos. journey since my arrival last November, and it is a strange feeling to know that I am leaving behind many friends both in and out of TVN. Though, I cannot deny that a summer in Oregon will be equally fabulous for both work and play!
I thought this was really neat. This 100-year-old Italian scientist says she feels her mind is sharper now at 100 than it was when she was 20!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090418/ap_on_re_eu/eu_italy_people_levi_montalcini
The many of you who read this are probably wondering what’s really been going on in Life’s Waltz Land the past number of weeks. There hasn’t been much reporting from the frontlines, there’s been a substantial amount of fluff posted to the blog and it’s felt like you’ve just been checking up on, essentially, a spree of forwarded emails posted to a blog, and you don’t really have much of a clue what’s going on except that you think we’re editing.
Well, while you’ve been left to wonder, many things have happened over here that beg reportage. But let me start off with the story of how we got to this point before I get into the meat of what’s happened in the past few weeks in my next post.
Once upon a time, Ashley and Jared made a 17-minute short-subject documentary called Life’s Waltz, about life, love, and loss in old age in their final semester at the University of Southern California. Though there were definitely some hitches along the way, they emerged with an overall wonderful learning experience and a solid, very enjoyable, professional product on their hands, screening it to a theater of over 400 people who hooted and hollered in applause for two filmmakers that the vast majority of them didn’t even know when they entered that landmark Norris theater that May 3. On the heels of this small but substantial success, the high-as-kites Ashley and Jared submitted their short film to a number of film festivals. It was rejected by every single one of the 15 or so that they submitted to, except that they’re still to this day waiting to hear from 3 or 4 more. No matter. Esteem untarnished, they kept their heads high. Who cares? Not they. In the meantime, they continued to show the film to friends, family, and absolute strangers the world over, as they each departed for 3 months to opposite ends of the Earth on backpacking trips.
When Jared returned to New York at the end of July, he walked around Times Square and made a couple of phone calls. One of them turned out to be fate-sealing: the one to none other than Ashley. “Yo, doozle. I’ve been thinking. The entire time I was traveling and meeting all of these amazing people, I had the growing compulsion to do a feature documentary. It’s what I want to do. What do ya say, pardna?” And so it was that Ashley and Jared committed to making a feature version of Life’s Waltz, one that would go deeper, hit harder, mean more, and defy all expectations. Jared hit the ground in LA in mid-August while Ashley was finishing up her job at her beloved ranch. They went through 9 drafts of a treatment (film summary, outline, plan and proposal) and got to work approaching various retirement communities in Bend (Oregon), Los Angeles, and Dallas to see where they could seal the deal on an opportunity to shoot their full-length documentary at an amenable retirement community of active, independent seniors.
Of course, things always take longer than one expects them to in film, and so finally, Jared went back to Dallas in mid-October, and it was then that they finally struck the golden deal at TVND (though other communities made themselves available in Dallas and Bend, as well). After a lot of time spent researching equipment, research, and how to create and run a company, signing some business and financial agreements, and a lot more planning (and with innumerable, crucial, and invaluable help from some key players in the business and legal departments), Ashley booked a ticket for Dallas. That brings us to late November, when we actually started filming Life’s Waltz. You see, originally Ashley and I had estimated that we’d shoot for about a month while also editing to see how our film was shaping up, then edit for a little bit, go back and shoot some more based on whatever story was emerging, and then wrap the entire film after a total of 3 months. We thought, “Hey, even if nothing comes of it, at least it will have been a great learning experience and we’ll have a feature film under our belts in 3 months, and we can part ways and go about our lives, nothing lost, and a lot of experience gained.” Well, remember how I said that things always take longer than one expects?
To be continued soon…
