Stefani Twyford's Blog (127)

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…

Recently I was one of three guest speakers on tonight’s GeneaBloggers Radio – Episode 45

The title of the show is “Capturing Family Memories – All Year Round.” 

You can go to my blog to listen to a clip from the show:

http://legacymultimedia.com/about/press/

Scroll down to Televsion and Radio, it is the first…

My father, Martin Elkort, is a collected and noteworthy photographer. His body of work, shot during a period of enormous possibility in our country, evokes feelings of both excitement and nostalgia in those that view and collect his photographs. Since my dad has become collectible, I’ve been to many of his shows and talked to gallery owners and collectors about his work and their own collections. The question always comes up whether I…

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…

We often hear clients complain they can’t remove their photos from those old inexpensive magnetic photo albums. Those are the ones with the pre-glued pages that you just stick the photos in and slide the plastic sleeve over the outside. While those may seem fast and easy, over many years the glue will have degraded and fused the back of the photo to the photo album page itself. Trying to remove it guarantees ripping your photo.

Several years ago there was a product on the market,…

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…

I am sitting here in Houston, waiting for Hurricane Ike to arrive. It’s 9AM and he’s not expected until around midnight but I’m nervous and not quite sure what to do. Arranging things around the house, most of it seems pointless. You never really know what’s going to happen until it happens. Will we flood? Will windows break from flying tree branches or patio furniture? Nobody can say for sure. But we are lucky and out of the way of such disaster that would require evacuating.

Two…

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…

I’m often not sure what the age range of my readership is, but probably most of you are not too young to remember the old-style accordion photo wallets that people (primarily grandmothers) used to keep in their purses before the advent of digital devices that not only make phone calls, but serve as virtual luggage for all of our digital data, including photos.

A photo wallet is a sleeve of connected plastic photo cases that usually fold up in an accordion fashion upon themselves.…

In January of 2008, Money Magazine wrote an article comparing 6 of the most popular scanning services. They sent 40 prints to the six different companies and rated them on cost, turnaround time and scan quality.

The top rated company was ScanCafe. ScanCafe operates out of Bangalore India so when you send photos to them, they are shipped over to India to be…

It’s been a little over a month since my last blog post where I shared how I was heading out to Los Angeles to help my parents in their transition to an assisted living facility. I’m happy to report that they are settled in and making the adjustment to their new lifestyle. They have their moments of “how did we get here?” but for the most part, they appreciate the regular and delicious meals, the nurse who makes sure they each take their medication on time each day, the plethora of…

A storyboard is an essential tool for laying out a video or film project to communicate the look of a piece, to show how a story or plot unfolds and to organize the sequence of scenes before any time or money has been spent on studio sets, location shoots or special effects. It serves as a roadmap for producers, directors, casts, crews, animators, audio engineers and post-production editors.

First developed by Disney Studios back in the 1930’s for their early animated films and used…

Last week NPR ran a segment on their show, Marketplace, entitled “Coming Soon, The Cash Peters Story” which was a look into the world of video biographies spotlighting one Los Angeles firm, Legacy Flicks, that charges $20,000 to put your name on the marquee for 30 minutes.

The segment was humorous and played upon the egotistical aspect of making a movie about your…

I have been blogging on four years now and I often surprise myself how much I really have to say about this subject of capturing one’s story, one’s history, for posterity. It is something that I have been passionate about since I started Legacy Multimedia in 2003 after seeing just how much film and photos and other bits of our past were floating off into oblivion in garbage dumps, recycle bins, vintage shops and other places where I would continue to find entire abandoned photo albums, cast…

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…