16 Feb Crowdsourcing County Pride
Video storyteller and artist Hannah Lindgren
“I was mad,” she says. During Hannah Lindgren’s sophomore year at Lawrence North High School, she got shut out of the photography class she desperately wanted to take. Instead, she got stuck in a video course. “By the end of it, I was smitten.”
What hooked her was the reaction to a video she produced about her mother’s father, Forrest Myers. Her grandfather, veteran of three wars, helicopter pilot and Purple Heart honoree, cried when his granddaughter showed him the video she had made about his life. To see him respond with such raw emotion proved to Lindgren just how powerful video could be.
Several years later now, Lindgren is the owner of Deliberate Media, a video storytelling agency she founded in downtown Noblesville in 2013. In March this year, she will present the Artist Showcase exhibit, #loveHC, inside the Stephenson House on the Noblesville Creates campus. The exhibit will feature Instagram and cell phone photos submitted by the community of sights, events, people, food and more things to love in Hamilton County.
As a videographer, Lindgren crisscrosses Hamilton County on a regular basis and views her surroundings through a lens and with a consciousness that the casual visitor may not have as they go about their daily lives. #loveHC will bridge that community pride with the popularity of whipping out your phone and snapping a photo.
“I believe that the strongest communities have a huge art base to them whether it’s in your face or subtle, whether it has to do with planning of the community and public art, or it’s a vibe that people appreciate the arts and arts events,” she says.
The home of Deliberate Media on the square in hipstoric downtown Noblesville.
“That’s why I chose Noblesville. I already was aware of how strong the arts community is here, so I knew I’d have the support I needed and would be able to continue to support this community that I had fallen in love with.”
Lindgren says initiatives in public art (Gabriel Lehman’s mural on the red brick wall near Eighth and Maples streets and Rick Heflin’s train car metal sculpture tucked inside the pocket park at the edge of the White River pedestrian bridge) and events (the chalk festival at Hamilton Town Center this past summer) demonstrate Noblesville’s commitment to the arts community.
“The more visible art you have, the more artists will be drawn to the community because they feel like they will be supported there,” she says.
Life experience
As an Honors College student at Ball State University, Lindgren studied film and television with a focus on theory and history. For fun and to keep her shooting and editing skills sharp, she recreated the first “Twilight” movie scene for scene, shooting in Washington to keep it authentic. She served as executive producer on “Indiana Outdoors” for three years. The student-run show aired on Muncie’s local public television station and featured four locations for each episode.
During her junior year, she pulled together a team of 11 students, and applied for and received a $10,000 grant from WIPB to produce what became “Fueling a Region: Indiana’s Gas Boom,” a documentary about the natural gas boom that occurred in Indiana in the late 19th century. While wrapping up school her senior year, she produced a crowd-sourced documentary about the Nerdfighters online community — a collaboration between Hank Green and John Green, the Indianapolis author of “The Fault in Our Stars.” The so-called “A Film to Decrease Worldsuck” was screened in eight cities around the world including Dublin and Pittsburgh.
That same year, she served as resident assistant to 40 honors freshman girls, was Tournament Director for the 6th Quidditch World Cup and finally found answers to debilitating food inflammation issues she had wrestled with for years. As a result, she has to be very careful about what she eats and drinks. “My biggest high is green tea and chocolate,” she says.
Settling in
After graduation in 2013, her mother encouraged her to reach out to Noblesville Creates Director Aili McGill to volunteer at the new arts organization.
“Much to my mom’s dismay, I would pack my lunch and go there like it was my 9-to-5,” Lindgren says.
Not long after, she moved in next door into an office space and opened Deliberate Media. Lindgren relocated to a sunny second-floor loft on Ninth Street in Noblesville overlooking the Courthouse in December 2015, where she and her team execute video storytelling for a variety of clients, from traditional businesses to nonprofits and private citizens with a cause.
In all of her work, she still focuses on creating a connection with her audience, just like the one she saw from her grandfather back in high school as he sat in his backyard. That video has some audio issues — crickets and birds — Lindgren says, but the emotion is still there.
During #loveHC, she isn’t seeking perfection in every image. The crowdsourced collection of photos will be woven together to create feelings about Hamilton County that represent the entire community.
“The arts vibe along the Nickel Plate Railroad is so authentic — like it’s always been here and we’re just highlighting it. You don’t have to force it here. It already exists.”
#loveHC — Instagram, Hamilton County and crowdsourcing collide in a most loving way during the March Artist Showcase exhibit, March 2-31. The #loveHC exhibit will fill the walls of our historic Stephenson House with photos showing the sights, people, foods and more we love in Hamilton County. Hannah Lindgren, founder of Deliberate Media video production in downtown Noblesville, rallied Instagram and cell phone users in our community to tag and submit images for #loveHC. You can get in on the visual conversation at the exhibit by writing what you love about Hamilton County and pick up a crayon to color a Hamilton County image designed by artist Kate Foster.
