Ordinary Interesting People: how it all began

The concept of researching a particular street from the census is an idea I have had for a long time, but before I had gained the confidence to tackle such a huge project, there was a humble YouTube channel. I loved the idea of taking "ordinary interesting people" who perhaps never made a big name for themselves but whose experiences were worth sharing nonetheless, and digging deep into their histories to find the stories.

 

Having zero experience of making or editing videos, and scared of copywrite laws, my teenage daughter and I teamed up to create our first YouTube video. It was a steep learning curve and a curve that I certainly never reached the top of. My daughter provided the artwork whilst I did the research, wrote scripts, recorded and edited. 

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I loved the research aspect of making the videos and I quite enjoyed writing the scripts, but I found recording my voice excruciating and the editing arduous and eventually tedious. We stopped at 8 videos, with the scripts and recordings for number 9 never used.

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The channel sadly sits unused but perhaps one day we shall make another longform video. I instead pivoted to short videos on TikTok.