What began by filmmaker Ashley Maynor as a modest attempt to preserve home movies by her grandmother, turned into a more than three-year investigation into the content of Angela Singer’s massive film and photo collection. The result of these efforts is For Memories’ Sake.

Production of the film began in earnest with the tedious process of preserving Angela Singer’s home movie collection, which consists of 79 reels of 8mm and Super-8 film.

After these initial efforts, director Ashley Maynor, with the help of a part-time intern, scanned and digitized over 30,000 of Angela’s photos. Ashley also logged much of Angela’s VHS-C video collection, which consists of over 150 hours of footage.

As Ashley began assembling Angela’s still and moving images into a movie, she simultaneously began gathering original footage to contextualize Angela’s striking images: audio interviews with family members, video interviews with Angela herself, and original Super-8 footage of Angela taking photographs.

About a year into the project, as Ashley began making the first assemblies in the editing room, filmmaker Paul Harrill became involved with the project. As the film’s producer and co-cinematographer, Paul helped Ashley find the structure of the film, advised her as she developed and performed the voice over that drives the narrative, and shot the film’s verite sequences and most recent interviews.

As the film evolved to a fine cut, editor Melissa Thompson was consulted to help refine, shape, and tighten the film to “picture lock.” Veteran documentarian Louis Massiah signed on as the film’s Executive Producer to provide further feedback and support. And the good folks at Motion Adrenaline in Roanoke, VA, came on board as consultants and generously worked with Ashley to develop animation concepts and scripts for the film.

In the final stages of post-production, Paul Hinson took Ashley’s animation concepts and polished them using Motion and After Effects with creative touches of his own. Meanwhile, Paul Harrill worked to secure the rights for the music that runs through the film. The producers wish to thank most especially Abigail Washburn and Bela Fleck for generously donating the use of their composition and recording “Annabelle June” as the film’s musical theme. Finally, the sound was edited and mixed by Keith Thomas.

A product of “self-reliant” and regional filmmaking, the film was made with a small crew and minimal budget and benefitted from support from the Southern Humanities Media Fund, The Arts Council of the Blue Ridge, and Virginia Tech’s School of Performing Arts and Cinema.

To learn more about the preservation efforts behind For Memories’ Sake, you can read our posts on Self-Reliant Film, which details the home movie transfer process and provides tips for others interested in preserving their family archives.

Other information about For Memories’ Sake may be found in the downloadable digital press kit.