Thursday 7th June 2018

It was with some trepidation that some of us gathered together at St Mary's Church this morning to be joined by Nicole and Gareth for a morning of filming. We had been invited by Gareth and Nicole to be the case study fronting a piece on the "Discovering England's Burial Spaces Project" (DEBS), to be shown on BBC Look North. 

Jen & Sue show how it's done

None of us wanted to be actually filmed - we all wanted to let Nicole do all the talking to camera while we were busy carrying out survey work in the background - such a shy bunch we are! But Heidi, who came to film us, wasn't having any of that. She was with us pretty much all day - from 10am to 3pm. She didn't even stop for lunch, although we managed to get her to have some tea and biscuits. There's no hiding from Heidi - she even managed to persuade Alan to be filmed demonstrating the RTI software, which was quite a feat.  

Camera-shy photographer prepares to be filmed

Apart from those moments when we were each talking to camera, it was a very enjoyable day!!

Sue, Jen & Tony were filmed demonstrating the technique of RTI photography - it was early in the day, and Alan thought at that stage he could get away with staying out of camera shot …
Revd Louise was filmed inside the church, talking about the church records and importance of the project, while the rest of us quietly sat nearby. 

Waiting while Louise is filming

Jen and Sue were filmed measuring up a gravestone, and the whole bunch of us wandered around the churchyard discussing the memorials - we forgot the camera at that stage, we were so engrossed in talking to Nicole about our early forays into comparative studies through the Craven area and Upper Wharfedale. Heidi had to call to us several times to direct us to walk towards her, or show certain features of the memorials to camera. 

I had my terrifying moments telling the stories behind two gravestones. I tried my best to just pretend I was doing another of our annual churchyard tours to a small group of people. 

It was a beautiful day and we had several walkers passing through, so Sue was backwards and forwards, chatting to them and giving them a brief churchyard tour, then popping back to the filming. Heidi really wanted to interview one visitor who was an American, but he and his friends said they didn't have time as they were on a long walk, which was a shame. 

So there we are! We shall have our 2 minutes of fame.
It was nice working with Heidi - she made it as relaxed and painless as possible. Nevertheless - Glad that's over....

Jane Lunnon