Silouan Green on the Sope Creek, Atlanta – by Jackson Ard
I just returned from an amazing weekend with TV production students and their professor from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta. They were gracious enough to make me their project for the semester! We shot at a friend’s home in Buckhead, in the college’s television studio, in an art gallery, and at Sope Creek Park in order to create promotional videos for my work with PTSD and trauma. It was an amazing weekend and I am so grateful for their enthusiasm and support.
But we had an accident! We shot a couple hours of video in the school’s sound stage Saturday only to discover later that night it had not been recorded to disc! It was all lost!
The next morning the mood was dark and cloudy as we began the hike down to Sope Creek for another morning of shooting. We had shot some great footage at the studio and it was all gone, and we wouldn’t be able to re-shoot at the studio before I left. What would we do?!
Their professor, Bob Judson, and I decided to make lemonade out of our lemons. He suggested we shoot something at his nearby home to replace the footage we had lost, and I had the idea to interview and counsel a couple of the students and get it on film. Sort of a first hand what I do to help people.
One of the students was a young man, Jackson, looking ahead at life and wondering what kind of man he would become, the other, David, a war veteran who still lived with the horror of watching friends die, pulling children from rubble.
When we were finished, for me, it was the most satisfying thing we had done all three days of shooting. Fancy video and pictures are nice, but engaging others with love as they allow us a glimpse of their lives is truly motivating and what my life is all about. I’m so thankful for them.
Life is filled with accidents. What will you do about them? You can fret about things that can’t be changed and can’t be recovered, or you can take the leftovers and make something wonderful and unexpected. Occasionally this “happy accident” will be magical.
Check back for more stories, photographs, and incredible video from this amazing trip. We are going to change lives with what we accomplished.
