A century of memories: Flo
At 102 years of age, Florence ‘Flo’ Doggett is believed to be Australia’s oldest living immigrant. Having migrated to Sydney with her family in 1909 as a two-year-old, Flo has seen a lot of change in more than a century of living. And despite her ailing eyesight, poor hearing and limited mobility, her memory is clearer than that of most people half her age.
Through the use of a Zoom H4n digital recorder, East Coast Freelancing was able was able to capture Flo’s lifetime of recollections as she reencountered her memories as a five-year-old when the Titanic sank, life as a young school girl during World War I, the hardships of the Great Depression and attending the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Our team of specialised sound engineers spent hours digitally remastering impressions and sounds from the early part of last century through the use of The Freesound Project which were then integrated and edited with Flo’s recordings through the use of Pro Tools.
East Coast Freelancing’s team of expert photographers were on hand to capture Flo as she is today. Using both a Canon EOS 400D and a Panasonic Lumix DMC-F27 camera, our team was able to recreate a remarkable portfolio of pictures for Flo’s family to treasure for generations to come.
A significant challenge facing our photography crew and artists was in the process of searching for and locating photos of the events that Flo had recalled and discussed throughout her audio recording. Many hours were spent sifting through countless historical and archival photo libraries before deciding on the appropriate sequence of photos that were eventually used in immortalising Flo.
Many of the older photos required ‘moderisation’, as our team painstakingly reworked and reproduced every photo used in the final production through Microsoft’s Digital Image Editor.
An example of an original photo:
The same photo enhanced and reworked through the use of Microsoft’s Digital Image Editor:
Finally, the complete reworked audio and pictures were brought together as a single entity through the use of the program SoundSlides.
We hope that, like Flo and her extended family, you enjoy our production of ‘Flo’...
