Project: Katrina Hope…raise funds…raise walls…raise spirits

In the process of producing Volunteers of Hope: Overcoming Katrina, we went on a mission for fitting music to accompany the stirring images shot in the prior months. One of the most poignant sections of the documentary displays pictures of Katrina’s destruction, so finding apt music proved particularly challenging.

While searching through my parents’ collections, I came across a song that took me back to those deserted streets in the Ninth Ward, back to standing on cement porches with residents telling me horrifying tales, and back to the frustration I often felt surveying FEMA trailer after trailer. This song just seemed to portray all of the sadness the Gulf Coast still harbors when recalling the aftermath of Katrina, so it was added to the documentary. It was not until we wrote the credits, though, that we discovered the ironic name of this tune-”Song of Hope.”

While witnessing overturned cars, residents rescued from their rooftops, and boats floating through streets, the song manages to inspire hope that eventually, someday, things will be right again. These two minutes of the documentary tended to be the most touching for me, reminding me that with volunteer help, it can be overcome. Funny what a little tune can do.

With hope,

Gretchen

PS-Want to see and hear the ways hope is working in the Gulf Coast for yourself? Purchase your copy of Volunteers of Hope: Overcoming Katrina today.

Posted on November 6th, 2008 by Gretchen Wieland
Filed under: From Gretchen