You can feel the passion in Glenn Dormand's voice when he talks about the work he and filmmaker Tony Whittaker (Carnivore Films) are producing for their Stories of Our Town series.
"At the moment, so much happening with the city and it's evolving so quickly, we have to know where we came from to know where we are going," said Dormand (aka Chit Chat Von Loopin' Stab).
The duo and their team have already produced short films on BHP, Joseph Lycett and James Wallis, the Scott Sisters of Ash Island and historian Vera Deacon.
On Friday they released a short film on the architecture of buildings in the Civic Park precinct, which includes The Roundhouse, Town Hall, Nesca House, Newcastle Art Gallery, two churches and the Newcastle Library building.
They will be releasing seven more films over the next two months on the individual buildings in the Civic precinct, with the timely release next week of the short film on the history of The Roundhouse, which opens next week in its new guise as the Crystalbrook Kingsley, a five-star hotel with a rooftop bar and restaurant.
The Roundhouse film includes commentary from architect Brian Suters, who was involved in the original building design, and Barney Collins of EJE Architecture, who was involved in the conversion of it to a hotel.
"While we were looking for stories, a few people mentioned the crazy variety of buildings around Civic Park," Dormand said. "We thought we could do a 15-minute film on architecture of Civic Park.
"As we got into it, we got some much deeper stories, and how they were built and who they were built by. And thought, maybe we will break it up into a bunch of small stories."
Although short, their stories are rich with detail, told through the voices of people who were part of the events and buildings.
"It's been wonderful making these," Dormand said. "Most of what I've done, where in bands or TV. It's been amazing to step back from that. To not use voiceover, not use much text. Get the story told by the people who lived it."
Stories of Our Town films can be viewed on their YouTube channel.
