Hi Sarah
Your post came out black on grey (no one would have been able to read that, young or old).
I do know a fair few people of that age group who might fit the category to one or another extent; unfortunately one of the most interesting chaps passed away earlier this year.
The others also have children and grandchildren; and would be worried about reputation damage; therefore they only openly discuss their “safe” hobbies like amateur radio, electronics, working on preserved railways etc. With this last one its particularly important not to come across as a boozer or drugs user as those railways have the same strict safety rules as the normal trains and they would lose the chance to volunteer on them.
Another factor is in 20 or so years time they may need a nursing home (I’m a former broadcast engineer who works in one as an IT/building services manager); they now carry out background checks on patients as well as staff and may not want to admit someone who is a potential drugs diversion risk or might exhibit a greater level of “challenging behaviour” than that which already occurs when folk get older and get dementia or other health conditions.
I know a lot of these older party animals via the tech/electronics scenes (in the 1970s if you wanted a psychedelic light setup and loud sound system you had to build it from components); but they have either sworn me to secrecy or have told me stuff only when they know they have only a few months left on earth.
The rest of them are most likely still working on and off and would be the ones looking after the “facility line” you will be sending your finished edit to the BT Tower for transmission, or keeping your edit suite running well, making sure the colour balance is correct etc. But these days they have to hustle for work all the time and the next day they could be working with a conservative religious channel; so again have to keep their reputations clean.
Hopefully you will find some volunteers and maybe some who don’t look like obvious cliché/stereotypes; I’d suggest offering the same level of protection you would to witnesses in an investigative reporting documentary to protect their identities; and when your show does go to edit think about what image you might be putting across; because we will all ourselves get older one day…
