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Tucson paper features tulip essay. |
Last August, Family Legacy Video president Steve Pender wrote about a visit to
his old New Jersey neighborhood that kindled memories of Wiffle Ball games and
his neighbor's tulips. That essay was picked up Tucson's Arizona Daily Star and
featured in a Sunday feature called "Life in Print." The essay and some photos
are still available online. You can view them here.
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Dreaming up a career in personal history. |
Dreams are funny things. Most disappear from my memory
in an instant, like flash paper kissed by a burning match, as soon as I open my
eyes to the light of day. Others, for no particular reasons I can fathom, remain
inked indelibly onto my long-term memory. I like to re-examine these dreams
occasionally to see if time and life experience bring additional insights into
their meanings. Once in a while I get lucky:
This is one of those dreams where I'm both a
participant and an observer. It's spring or summer. I see myself playing in the
backyard of my boyhood New Jersey home with one of my brothers. I'm about
eight years old; Bob is around two. Suddenly, it's time for me to leave. I
stand, and in an instant I'm walking by myself, way in the distance. Bob
immediately notices that he's alone and he begins to cry. Even though I'm miles
away, I hear his distress. I turn, and in a moment I'm back with my brother. I
take his hand in mine. Then, in another instant, we're walking together, far,
far away.
This is the oldest of my "inked-in" dreams, staying
with me since I was eight years old. It's always resonated with me in a very
strong and visceral way. I could never put my finger on just what gives this
dream its staying power. But looking back on it nearly forty-five years later, I
think its imagery sheds some light on why I became a personal historian.
On a basic level, the narrative is about me leaving my
brother behind, then realizing my mistake and taking him with me on my journey.
But when I approach it a little more creatively, I see that the two figures can
also represent generations of a family, one older and one younger. We often get
separated - sometimes by distance, sometimes by time, many times by both. How
can we bridge these gulfs and stay connected? In the dream my brother and I link
hands. From my current perspective as a video biographer and personal historian
I help generations create links by sharing stories.
Preserving, sharing and celebrating personal and family
stories is the greatest way of fostering and maintaining connections between
generations that I know. When you commit your story to video or audio or print,
you're reaching out to your family's younger generations and generations yet to
come. You're saying, "Hi. We're family and we're connected. I'd like to
introduce myself and pass my experiences, observations and insights along to
you. This is my gift to you and I hope you enjoy and profit by what I have to
say. And please, pass my life story and yours along to the next generations of
our family."
Speaking from my own experience, hearing stories about
my grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts and uncles made me appreciate them
and feel connected to them as flesh-and-blood people, instead of flat and faded
images in a photo album. And thanks to today's video technology, I can help
folks capture their stories as never before, creating legacy videos that will
allow future generations to see and hear ancestors speaking directly to them.
Generations "holding hands" and staying connected
through the power of story - that's what this dream now means to me. And if
dreams are signposts, I'd say this one had me pointed towards a career as a
personal historian long ago.
- - Steve Pender
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Family Legacy Video is proud of the premium video biographies
we create for our clients. In order to highlight the quality of our work and to
demonstrate the possibilities for you, we've posted samples from a variety of
our custom legacy videos online in the Family Legacy Video Theatre™.
How do you visit the Family Legacy Video Theatre™?
Simply go directly to the Sample Clips page
of our Web site. There you'll find a video player,
consisting of a monitor with playback controls and a list of available clips.
Here's how it works:
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Click the large red arrow in the monitor. Clips will play in order from
the top of the list.
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OR - click on the individual titles below the monitor to play the clips in any
order you like.
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Raise and lower the sound using the slider control (short red bar) below the
monitor on the right.
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To the right of the audio bar is what looks like a little square surrounded by
arrows. Click on this to expand the video to full screen.
You'll need the free Flash Player to play the videos.
Enjoy the show and please let us know what you think of the new video player!
Remember, the Family Legacy Video
Theatre™
is always open, and YOU decide when the show begins.
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Ask Steve - This
month: When silence is golden. |
Q: Dear Steve,
In your Producer's Guide you advise us to have two seconds of silence after each answer
of the person that is interviewed. When I cut a clip into two parts some words
of the answer that is given are lost. If I would have kept two seconds of
silence, probably there would not have been any loss of words. Is that the
reason why you recommend to keep two seconds of silence after each answer?
- - Menno N., Netherlands
A: Hi, Menno.
Thanks for writing. Leaving at least a couple of seconds of
silence at the end of an answer, before you ask the next question, does leave
you enough space to make a clean cut and is a big help when you are editing.
Knowing that you need to leave a couple of seconds of silence at the end of a
question also keeps you, as the interviewer, from “jumping in” at the end of an
answer and possibly talking over the last word or two of your subject’s answer.
I also recommend that you record “room tone” at the end of an interview. To do
this, simply tell your interview subject that you are both going to sit quietly
for 10 to 15 seconds. Then, start your camera recording, record an audio slate
by saying “room tone” and then mentally count off 10 to 15 seconds. You can then
say “end room tone” and stop your tape. Having room tone to work with is a big
help in editing. That’s because every room, no matter how quiet, has some sound
associated with it, even if it’s just the movement of air through the room. When
you need to add a pause here and there or make a clean audio cut, you can insert
a piece of room tone to make the cut sound natural. If you cut to no audio at
all, you’ll hear the room tone drop away - and that can be distracting.
Good luck!
Cheers, Steve
Got a question about any aspect of family
history video production?
Send it to Steve at
steve@familylegacyvideo.com.
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