Saratoga Springs residents have a chance to tell their stories, their way.
WMHT brought back its decade-old documentary series, Our Town, and chosen the city as one of the communities to showcase.
`WMHT has a long history of telling the region’s stories from the perspective of a producer and director, but we came with this concept so the people of a given community could tell the story of their town from their own perspective,` said Scott Sauer, of WMHT.
The stories of Bethlehem, Amsterdam and Hudson have already been told and Saratoga Springs will get its turn in mid-August.
What makes the series truly documentary is that residents or groups of residents actually film whatever story they’re sharing and submit it to producers, who compile it.
`There are always certain ideas that we have going into a community, but what is always great is that stories come out that we in a million years might never have realized,` said Sauer.
For example, he had no idea that Amsterdam was home to the `Pierogi Angels.`
`We didn’t know going in there would be this wonderful community group, the Pierogi Angels, who were primarily seniors who get together every holiday to make pierogis in a community church and sell them for the benefit of the community,` said Sauer. `Who knew that was such a tradition and heartfelt part of them. It was something we would have missed if we hadn’t let people tell it.`
Sauer is especially looking forward to seeing what stories will come out of Saratoga Springs because the city was featured in the original series run 10 years ago.
`Some of the stories may overlap with what we had the first time, but they’ll be told from a unique perspective, a new point of view,` said Sauer. `Who knows what has come up between now and then.`
WMHT consulted its community advisory board to decide which communities to showcase.
`It gave us lots of suggestions of places where we might like to go. We serve a large geographic area so we knew we wanted to represent as many communities in that area as we could,` said Sauer.
Sauer said that while each community results in a distinctly different episode, there are universal threads that course through all of them.
`These are heartfelt, organic stories of the community,` said Sauer.
There are even similarities between today’s episodes and the ones that were produced last decade.
`That was before the days of YouTube and user generated content and the days when everyone has video capabilities on their phones,` said Sauer. `Today’s video capabilities have expanded the look and enhanced the feel of them and expanded the number of people involved.`
Sauer said WMHT gets videos from elementary age children all the way up to elderly residents, as well as church groups and community organizations.
`[People] pool their resources to tell a story,` said Sauer. `We’ve just been thrilled with the overall response in terms of the volume of stories, the quality and the heart in the stories.`
Spa City residents still have time to get their stories in, the deadline being Monday and Tuesday, May 23 and 24. On those two days, all participants will be asked to go to the National Racing Museum for on-camera interviews that will become narration for their segment.
`We sit down with the person who has submitted something and they tell us what it is that they shot and that becomes the narrative for their story,` said Sauer.
A public screening will unveil the `Our Town Saratoga Springs` episodes at Skidmore College on Tuesday, Aug. 16, at 7 p.m. The television broadcast will air on Aug. 18 at 7:30 p.m. on WMHT.
Sauer said at least two more communities are expected to get documentaries by the end of the year.
Anyone interested in submitting a video story should contact WMHT producer Joanne Durfee at [email protected] or 880-3400.
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