All Blog Posts Tagged 'Preserving' (79)

I have been working on what I refer to as a long-format video biography. My client has hired me for a year to develop a personal history as well as to film significant events during the year. We’ve been doing this since November 2011 and so far we’ve shot four different events. A couple of the events, we’ve turned into short individual videos to send out to people who attended while other footage is waiting to fit into its bigger scope.

Sunday I was at my client’s Super Bowl party,…

Part 2 of a series about capturing the joy of family events on video

Last week I introduced this series about creating videos to capture the joy of family events and special occasions like weddings, anniversaries, birthdays and holiday get-togethers. Now let’s delve a bit deep into the process by discussing the first of four main phases used in multimedia productions – concepting / script writing.

First, try to develop a concept that really captures the spirit…

Part 1 – Overview (This will be part 1 of a 5 part series)

Okay, admit it. What do you normally think when someone announces, “It’s time to show Home Movies”? You mentally roll your eyes while giving them a blank stare or at best, a forced smile don’t you? That’s because most home movies are dreadfully boring affairs with no audience appeal outside the immediate family. The joy of these events is often lost in the transition from live experiences to the screen. Well, it doesn’t have…

I started out this week on a note of frustration. There was one week to go until Christmas and my office was filled withboxes of cards, boxes of client gifts, and lots of nothing seeming to get done. I was remembering last year, in early January, how I thought to myself that before I knew it, the holiday season and end of the year would be right around the corner. And here I was, sitting at that…

I have a new client that I just started working with. One of my customs is to request an invitation to dinner with the family before I start work. This gives me an excellent opportunity to study the social dynamics of each family. I get the opportunity to see them interact with each other in a relaxed atmosphere. I also request to be seated next to the subject(s) so I can see how easy they are to engage in conversation, what their memory is like and other communication traits. This helps me…

Yesterday I gave a presentation to one of the local chapters of the DAR, or Daughters of the American Revolution for short. If you’re not familiar with the DAR, there are chapters all over the country (as well as other countries) of women who can trace their direct lineage to someone who served in the Continental Army or gave material aid to the cause of freedom in the American Revolution. This organization is committed to preserving…

When I worked on my own autobiography several years ago, I used this technique which I sort of invented ( I say that because I’ve never heard of anyone else using it either in my background as a social worker or speaking with other personal historians). What I would do is to find an old picture of me from a time period that my memories were vague. I would look at the photo and start placing concrete things into my memory.

For instance, there is a photo of me taken on a piano bench…

Because I am in the business of helping people create Legacy video biographies and tribute videos, people often want to share eulogies they have written for others. Yesterday a friend of mine sent me one that she had written for her mother, who passed away earlier this year. It was a three page Word document that had me in tears. Not because of any sadness for this woman’s passing but for the joy of having a daughter who knew her so well that she could so beautifully capture the essence of…

Lately, I keep running into people who say, “I haven’t checked into your blog this week but I’m wondering how things are going with your parents?”

These are questions that make me happy because I’m thrilled to know that people read my blog and feel the desire to catch up with what’s going on. Also, this life stage with my parents seems to resonate with so many of my friends and readers. So many people have dealt with, or are dealing with, this stage in life where you’ve finally gotten…

A couple days ago, my friend and client Jay Steinfeld, CEO and founder of Blinds.com posted a “tweet” on Twitter (Jay is @BlindscomCEO) that read: “If you think hiring an expert is expensive, just try an amateur!”

I found myself laughing in that “I get it but it’s really not very funny” way because it’s so true. Just…

As I was waking up this morning, I was aware of a dream that I was having. In the dream, I was sitting at a dining room table with the family of a client that I had done a video biography for. It was obvious that this person had recently passed and we were discussing the biography. A woman seated to my right said, “well that biography was wonderful except for that huge lie that she told about having lived in the palace at Versailles!”

At that point, I woke up and, after having a good…

I was recently telling someone about the work I do and I got some interesting feedback. He said, “you’re an interpreter.”

I have been spending some time with that statement and find it very intriguing. I guess I have always collapsed an interpreter with a translator. But when you look up the definition an interpreter is someone who facilitates communication. From the dictionary… “The interpreter will take in a complex concept from one language, choose the most appropriate vocabulary…

I was at a Bat Mitzvah this past Saturday and the presiding rabbi gave a sermon on the gift of time. He had seen an ad for a famous jewelry company that depicted a graduate in cap and gown, with a new watch on her arm. The caption was, “There Is No Present Like The Time”, which of course, is a twist on the old idiom, “There Is No Time Like The Present” to show that the watch was the gift of time. But the watch is also a metaphor for the larger definition of time. I wish I had the sermon to…

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything here and while I have been very busy with work and new clients, I have felt a missing of my creativity and inspiration. It occurred to me over the weekend that the source of my ennui was the recent deaths of 4 people I knew within the time-span of two weeks. These were not old people, peers of my parents, who were battling long illnesses and the gentle creep of old age, but my own peers, (give or take a decade) that left suddenly, with little…

These days, many of us take photos with our phones and send them to each other via email or post them online to various photo sharing websites such as Flickr and Twitpic. I’ve also got photos on my Facebook profile and there’s some video clips of me speaking on my website. I don’t have photos of my…

As I write this, I am sitting on a plane returning from a family reunion in California. My cousin celebrated his 70th birthday yesterday and several family members flew in for the occasion. My cousin's grandmother and my grandmother were sisters, so while I see him all the time (since he lives in the same building as my parents), his sisters and their…

I spend a lot of time flying back and forth between Houston and Los Angeles to visit my family. The flight is 3 hours and last year I made a commitment to spend that three hour time period working on sorting, identifying and tagging all of my digital photos. By the time we take off, get our complimentary beverages, prepare for the descent, it probably works out to about 2 hours but that time I have totally dedicated to this task. I decided to focus this time on this…

I have been watching “In Treatment“, an HBO drama about a psychotherapist, Paul Weston (with award winning performance by Gabriel Byrne). Each episode is a session with one of his patients, including one session with his own therapist, Gina, at the end of the week. The session with Gina covers some of the things that are going on with his patients…