Lily Tibbitts’ – Student Life #150
One of my classes this term is about documentary making – something completely new to me as I’m useless with a camera (as my sister will tell you from many failed attempts to take nice photos of her and my family). I thought it would be fun, so I decided to give it a go, but then I had to decide what to make my five minute documentary about. It had to be something interesting and personal, so I picked the Ambler. After all, how many towns can say they have a community newspaper that’s been running for 25 years?
I started off with fun interviews with the wonderful Anna (thank you for sitting there for two hours) and then I started to build up my other shots: the lights parade, the community spirit event, the harbour, the pods.
If you spotted someone wandering around with a huge camera and a confused expression, that was probably me.
As I started layering all these shots together with Anna’s story of how the Ambler came to be, a narrative started to appear. A story of our community, built by the town and the newspaper together.
The Ambler is something that’s easy to take for granted. It appears on our doorsteps every couple of months without us having to do anything at all, but it’s such an important part of our community.
It’s crucial for keeping everyone informed about what events are going on and providing space for everyone in Amble to make their voices heard.
The Ambler is an incredible thing to have in our town, and I hope that my documentary can reflect even a tiny bit of that.
Lily Tibbitts
