Slates for Sarah

Overview

Slates For Sarah is a Facebook memorial campaign launched to remember Sarah Elizabeth Jones, a 27-year-old camera assistant who was fatally struck by a freight train while working on a film set in February 2014.

Background

On February 19th, 2014, 27-year-old camera assistant Sarah Elizabeth Jones was struck by a freight train and killed while working on the set of musician Gregg Allman’s biopic “Midnight Rider” on a rail bridge in Doctortown, Georgia. According to Variety^[8], the film crew were shooting on location with permission from the land owners and knowledge of the train schedule, but the incident took place when the set was unexpectedly disturbed by the approach of a third train, which fatally struck Jones and injured seven other members of the crew.

Notable Developments

Slates for Sarah

On February 24th, 2014, a group of Jones’ friends and family members launched a Facebook^[1] page in tribute to her, encouraging others to share their memories of Jones and a photograph of a film slate with her name written on it. In the following 48 hours, the memorial campaign for Sarah Jones quickly caught on with film crews around the world, leading to an outpour of clapboard photographs dedicated to her on Facebook^[1], Twitter^[2] and Instagram.^[3] As of February 26th, the Facebook page has garnered more than 36,200 likes and the hashtag #slatesforsarah was mentioned more than 4,000 times on Twitter.^[4]

Academy’s In Memoriam

That same day, Anderson Villen set up a petition^[7] to add Sarah Jones to the memoriam tribute presented during the Academy Awards ceremony. Within 48 hours, the petition brought in more than 33,000 signatures.

External References