We Did it! Platform launch and You Responded with Flowers
There’s so much to read and not enough time. Lots of guff, algorithmic click bait, and then the gems that are nestled in good places like @Medium that add a slither of essence to our daily lives.
So thank you for responding. Here are just some of your comments to our platform launch.
This week we launched our platform, Chairman. In areas like West Africa Chairman is synonymous with Oga, or Big Man, inferring a highly respectful figure when being addressed.
The premise is simple. That story of your mum, dad, brother, friend, grandparents, supposedly ordinary people doing extraordinary things. That’s the one.
Those are the stories that enlighten, sometimes inspire, bridge the “I can do it too” and create lodestars. They fit within the language of Neorealism — stars without being anointed stars. Neorealistic films were renowned for open castings using non-actors who became famous.
Something exists in your family member’s demeanour and livelihood that draws intakes of breath and wide-eyed 20 mile stares when you recount their stories in a bar.
“That there is a movie” a friend would proclaim.
“Hah!” you’d think with a flash of satisfaction, before being urged, “so what are you going to do?” and “by the way it’s your turn for the next round”. So much for empathy.
But I’ve been thinking about it, a lot. And in the last month thought let’s do it and used my father as an example. He was an ordinary man, but went through extraordinary circumstances. It’s the story you have of your folks, I imagine too.
Dad was 25-years old in 1955 when he left a country then called the Gold Coast, now Ghana. He was a policeman and should he have pursued it in the UK he would have been the first, if not one of the first Black law enforcement officers in London. It was in 1965ish when that would finally happen. But by then dad had a change of heart.
I joked with a friend. He’d have been the 1950s equivalent of Luther, the famed BBC series starring Idris Elba as a troubled detective. Except this 50s version would have been executed in the style of Neorealism portraying everyday life in its tensions, something Robert Bresson did in films like PickPocket (1959).
Dad went back to school, was up against the UK’s colour bar which is well documented in historical texts and struggled to forge that independent spirit to flourish into what he’s like to become which I’m told he had in Gold Coast (which became Ghana.)
The covenant with the Ghana government was to study and come back to help rebuild the country. He wasn’t going back. Neither were a slew of West Africans. In the UK the journey of Caribbeans and their tribulations is increasingly being documented referred to as Windrush; not so West Africans and Ghanaians who are the biggest Black group in the UK.
The paradoxes in our family surface. We’re placed in foster care. Parents unable to cope. Dad becomes a minor celebrity in South London helping to settle new arrivals. And then he runs out of road, and returns to Ghana with us kids in tow. I couldn’t love and hate my new surroundings any more. I’ll miss out some bits here about him going to Zaire to see the Ali Vs Foreman fight, and how the military in Ghana would threaten to jail him whilst he was being courted by politicians to form a party and CEOs to head up businesses.
Yesterday, I reread his obituary from the Care home in the UK which would be his final home. “Edward was a proud and intelligent man whose dementia worsened. He will be much missed”.
The thing is I never got to sit him down and interview him. I never, despite the fact that I’d become a professional journalist and reporter working for the likes of BBC, ABC News and Channel 4 News. I knew no better, it appears and I deeply regret not capturing his voice and image on tape.
My mother rarely spoke about her past and dad; they separated. But I have a 45 min conversation I surreptitiously recorded of her at breakfast that fills in gaps.
And then I have this idea. What if I use Gen AI to recreate his past, based on my research. It’s insane but works. I create this short promo to illustrate where I’d like to take his biopic and half of the scenes are generated from AI. I’m using AI in the same way an impressionist painter would work, creating images for other projects, such as this Frontline.
It’s weird because I featured Impressionist paintings and their work in my PhD thesis years back, as a way to create feelingful images.
It’s weird because my immediate family watch the promo and can’t tell that images of dad have been AI generated. My sis asks, “David, I’ve not seen those photos of dad, can I have them?”
Then a couple of months ago, my sister rings me up. Twenty plus years ago she was given a suitcase by dad with letters and correspondence. She’d forgotten about it. Would I like to come over? I do incurring that day two £65 driving penalties for driving down a road with restrictions between 11–1 pm. Really! Really!
I’m still taking in the letters written in flowing flamboyant italic handwriting .
Yesterday, I came across on the site formally known as Twitter this which sits with our launch and originally an idea from two years ago.
It excited me so much to see what @nagda is doing. “Brilliant!” I replied. Two Years ago, when I first had the idea without the help of AI, I drew up this diagram, a story bazaar, in a zoom with a leading law firm and MP David Lammy. A way for professionals to lend their story telling skills n’ all to others.
My dad would have been 94 today. If you have a mobile phone, a camera grab their story whilst you can.
As an academic now I advocate this community filming, particularly for groups who’ve been poor at documenting their past or lacked the resources. It’s not just social, but also has deep currency in an AI world.
Yesterday, after a week of coding and critiquing from my family and friends I launched the platform and the response has been soul satisfying. Here it is below accessible at www.videojournalism.co.uk.
The hardest part of developing a thing isn’t the idea, or sometimes the product itself, but the execution. Getting it to take off and maintaining that momentum. That’s where I am now, and value the support given and humbly request your indulgence pushing this forward.
