We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tommy Dilger. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tommy below.
Alright, Tommy thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s talk about social media – do you manage your own or do you have someone or a company that handles it for you? Why did you make the choice you did?
I manage all my own social media accounts, and I don’t think I’d ever feel comfortable passing that off to someone else. I feel like what I do is really dependent on that personal touch, especially since there really aren’t that many people doing what I do. Especially when it comes to the old footage and photos I find. These film reels and negatives are one of a kind, and I was in the right place at the right time to save these forgotten memories. It’s a really personal experience seeing these films, a glimpse into the memories of people long dead, and it’s likely that I am the first one to see these images in decades. I feel like sharing these personal moments is a really important part of what I do, and I don’t think I could hand that off to someone else.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I’m Tommy Dilger. I’m a 20 year old from southeast Michigan, and I’m currently in my second year studying Film and Photography at SCAD Savannah. I’ve been shooting on film since I was 15 when I found my first film camera at an estate sale. It’s just something about that old, analog technology that really interests me, and I kind of prefer using these old cameras over modern digital ones. As a historical reenactor, using this equipment in their original contexts makes the whole experience even cooler to me, especially when the final product looks almost indistinguishable from original examples. In the world of reenacting, there aren’t too many people portraying combat cameramen that almost exclusively use period cameras and equipment. It gives my work a sense of authenticity that just isn’t there when I’m using digital cameras.
My second big area of interest is archiving old motion picture films, negatives, and printed photographs. I also develop old film that I or my social media followers have found in old cameras. I’ve been doing this for the last 2 years, and each find is always unique and interesting. I’ve also managed to track down the original families of these films, sometimes only going on one name and a location. These glimpses into the lives of the past are always extremely interesting, and I love preserving these memories that would have otherwise been lost for good, and sharing them with more people than the original owners ever thought possible.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Two years ago, I began working on a documentary covering the life of my Great Grandfather Philip Stoegerer Sr, or as he called himself, “China Sea Phil”. I had begun work in the middle of the initial Covid lockdown my senior year of high school when I had found myself in a creative rut. My Mom was battling stage 3 Breast Cancer, my Dad had just been diagnosed with Prostate Cancer, and we were all trapped inside just like everyone else. I knew I had to do something, the endless empty days were driving me crazy and my home life was far from normal. During all this, I had discovered the big bin of my great grandfather’s photos, documents and other belongings that had been sitting idle since his death on new years eve 1980, 22 years before my birth. I began the looming task of going through this bin scanning every photo, reading every letter, and poring over pages and pages of his documents. As I learned more about him a story began to emerge, and I decided I had to share it. I began work piecing together the mysterious life story of a man only 3 living family members had met. This was going relatively smoothly, until about 6 months into the project. While working on the film, my hard drive suddenly failed, crashing my computer. They said my hard drive had overheated, and it was likely that I lost everything. Devastation doesn’t begin to describe my emotions. At that point, I had poured so much work into it that I was giving up on the project if nothing could be recovered. Much to my relief, they had managed to save 90% of the film’s files, saving the film. I managed to finish it a few months later and it went on to receive a few awards, and I’m still very proud of the film to this day.
How did you build your audience on social media?
I had been posting my work online since I was a young teenager, making LEGO stop motion videos in my basement. I’m obviously moved past that kind of content, but the point stands that I’ve been posting online for quite a while. To this day my YouTube channel only has 2,000 subscribers, but I’ve had quite a bit of success on TikTok. The first video I posted on the platform was covering some 1950’s slides I scanned, and much to my surprise it exploded immediately, currently sitting at 720,000 views. That did give me quite the jumpstart, but I couldn’t tell you how that video went as crazy as it did. Since then I’ve gained about 50,000 followers on the platform, and I guess the only advice I can give is “post what you like and like what you post”. I try to post the videos I would want to see, and that has worked out for me so far. Sometimes my videos find an audience that likes this stuff as much as I do, sometimes barely anyone sees it. Try not to let these underperforming videos bother you, after all it’s my opinion that I should post videos for myself, not for the approval of others, though that can be pretty nice too. I’ve kept up my social media presence because I like posting and I’m just excited to share what I do with people, and that model has been working out for me so far.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://tdilge20.wixsite.com/tpd-productions
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tpd_photos/?hl=en
- Youtube: https://m.youtube.com/c/TPDProductions
- Other: Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tpd_photos Film Archive YouTube: https://youtube.com/channel/UC7kFmdeQgjOnH1lsM1qxF-w