I’m a Producer!

I’m a producer – and a legend in my own mind.

I finally finished my first attempt at my first family history video.  It was a challenge. The subject is one set of my great grandparents while they lived in Poland.

Challenge:

Visual content.  There are no photographs of them from that time and, of course, no moving pictures.  I chose images of them that I’d cropped from a later family portrait.  They’re fuzzy, but they’re all I have.  I captured Google Earth images of their home towns  I used photos of the ships on which they arrived in the US.

Challenge:

Script.  I never knew these ancestors so my knowledge comes from oral family history and from documents found during my research.  I also wanted to include a bit of history to put their lives in Poland in context. I ended up modifying the script as I recorded it.

Challenge:

Video software. I’d heard of free software called Movie Maker from Microsoft.  My expectation was that it would be very basic and pretty user friendly. Not for this user.  The download includes no documentation and I could find no “help” button. It was extremely frustrating.

So I dug out my 10 year old Adobe Premier Elements hoping that it would run on Windows 7. It does. It is very user friendly, and it has excellent help and tutorials.

Challenge:

Timing.  I’d learned that 6 minutes is a good upper limit for time.  It turned out that I had so little visual content that it came in at 3 minutes.

Challenge:

Audio software.  Here I was very lucky.  I found free software called Audacity.  It is very highly rated and although it has features needed by professionals, it is extremely easy to use for those of us who know nothing about the intricacies of sound recording.  It comes with excellent documentation.

Challenge:

Recording:  Do I speak clearly enough?  How’s my voice modulation and pacing?  Etc. etc. etc.  I recorded in segments and for reasons I don't yet understand,  the sound level is not equal across them all.  I'll have to learn more about using the software to ensure uniform sound levels.

In the end, I actually came up with a 3 minute video that I’m willing to show to a few other people, but not the whole world.  I’ll show it to those who, I believe, will give it a fair evaluation so that I can make improvements.

I’ll definitely do more like this.  I’m a producer!!