Workshops teach video biography techniques for fun & business
Tucson’s Family Legacy Video, Inc., a pioneer in the personal video biography field, is holding two unique video biography workshops in Tucson in April, 2008.
From April 25 to 27, a three-day workshop entitled “Create Your Own Video Biography” ushers attendees through the process of creating their own family history video projects. Participants will learn how to draft questions, light, shoot and conduct interviews and prepare for editing.
On April 28, Family Legacy Video presents “The Business of Video Biographies.” This one-day workshop is aimed at budding video biographers interested in starting or growing their own businesses. Topics ranging from the kinds (and costs) of video gear required, to marketing and pricing services will be discussed.
Family Legacy Video president Steve Pender hosts the two workshops, which will also feature presentations by the Phoenix production team of Dan Crapsi and Ginny Temple and Tucson-based marketing expert Dan Blumenthal. Pender is an award-winning scriptwriter, video editor, director and producer with over 29 years of experience. He is the author of the Family Legacy Video Producer’s Guide. Pender and Family Legacy Video have been featured in both print and broadcast. Print: The Explorer News, the Arizona Daily Star, EventDV, a leading video industry trade magazine, and Miami Monthly Magazine. Broadcast: “Arizona Spotlight” on KUAZ AM/FM and Fox News in Arizona.
Discounted “early bird” workshop registration is being offered until February 29, 2008. The final registration deadline is April 1, 2008. Complete workshop details are available on the workshop page of the Family Legacy Video Web site, or by calling 520.743.4090.
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Use old family music recordings to score your video
Music can lend emotion and a sense of time and place to any video biography. And if any of the subjects of your video biographies are musicians, you may be able to use some of the music of their lives to lend a very personal touch to their video life stories.
Here are two examples:
A Family Legacy Video Workshop veteran recently finished a video biography that featured her father. Her dad had been a mandolin player and had belonged to a mandolin club during his college days. Years later, he was recorded playing and discussing his favorite tunes. This reel-to-reel audio tape was eventually copied to CD. His daughter then incorporated the words and music from this wonderful family keepsake as a featured element in her family history video.
The father of a current video biography client was an amateur musician. He wrote a tune that his daughter, an accomplished pianist, later recorded. The song, and the story behind it, will be included in the daughter's video biography, preserving it for generations to come.
So while you're considering what to include in a video biography, don't overlook the opportunity to use some of those vintage family audio recordings that have been gathering dust for years. You'll give those audio tapes new life. In turn, they'll bring an added dimension to your production - and help you "score" with your family.
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Family Legacy Video on the radio - listen in!
On December 21, 2007, I took to the radio airwaves to speak about video biographies. The experience was great fun - and I've archived the segment on the Family Legacy Video Web site so you can listen in!
I was a guest on "Arizona Spotlight," a show broadcast every Friday morning and evening on Tucson's NPR stations KUAZ AM/FM. I actually visited the radio studio on December 5 and spent about a half-hour chatting with the show's host, Mark McLemore. Mark edited the interview down to a little over 7 minutes in length.
I've archived the segment on the Family Legacy Video site. All you have to do to listen is go to the site's radio page. Once there, click on the audio button near the top of the page - don't worry, it's easy to find. I hope you enjoy the interview.
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Some local press for Family Legacy Video
Shortly after Labor Day, a reporter and photographer from the Explorer, Tucson's weekly newspaper, visited with we to talk about preserving personal history on video.
The announcement of my workshops at the annual conference of the Association of Personal Historians kindled the interest of reporter Ty Bowers, who explored the subject of video biographies with me for a couple of hours. The article appeared in the September 12 issue of the paper. You can read the online version here.
Note: The article contained a couple of factual errors. I grew up in Rahway, N.J., not Clifton (I did live in Clifton before moving to Tucson). Also, my grandmothers's bio was long ago viewed by my family.
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Join Steve Pender & other personal historians this November!
If video biography and personal history is your cup of tea, you'll want to be in Tennessee this November.
Author and award-winning video biographer Steve Pender of Tucson's Family Legacy Video will present two workshops (Preparing & Conducting a Video Biography Interview & Transcripts With Time Code: The Video Biographer’s Friend) at the Association of Personal Historians (APH) annual conference in Franklin, Tennessee (right next door to Nashville), November 8-12, 2007. More than 300 personal historians - writers, oral historians, and videographers - in the business of “saving lives one story at a time” by creating biographies and memoirs in various formats - will gather from throughout the United States and Canada and as far away as Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and Europe.
According to Steve, “More and more Americans recognize the value of preserving family and personal stories on video in order to create legacies for future generations.” Family Legacy Video caters to this trend by producing video biographies and by teaching folks how to do it themselves.
While virtually unknown a few short years ago, the idea of “saving lives” through professionally videotaped memoirs has exploded in popularity. Today, professionals in the emerging field have translated their backgrounds in journalism, film, oral history, psychology, storytelling, graphic design, publishing, history and education into the business of documenting the lives of clients as well as the histories of corporations and other organizations.
Thirty distinctive workshops, including Steve’s two sessions, are scheduled for the 2007 APH Conference. Each will focus on the skills, equipment and methods personal historians must hone in order to capture lives and memories effectively for future generations. Information about APH and its conference is available at www.personalhistorians.org.
Come join Steve in Tennessee!
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Audio tips for two-camera video bio shoots
Let's say you've decided to videotape an interview with two family members. In order to give yourself some options when you edit, you want to shoot them using two cameras. So how do you capture audio? And how do you synch up the tapes from your two cameras during editing?
RECORDING AUDIO
Option 1: You can mount a lapel microphone on each subject, run the mics into a mixer, and feed the outputs of the mixer to the audio inputs of each camera. Of course, in order to do this you need a mixer and someone to mix the audio while you're recording. This is probably not something that's going to be possible for most family projects.
Option 2: Most consumer and many prosumer cameras have only one microphone input. When shooting with two cameras, you'll need to run one microphone to each camera. (Note: Unless you're using stereo microphones, the camera will place the audio on only one half of your camera's stereo channel. You'll need to copy the audio over to the other half of the channel during your edit.)
Option 3: You can buy an audio adaptor that contains two audio inputs. The inputs are of the professional XLR type (three-pin). The output of the adaptor is a mini-plug that plugs into the mic input of your camera. The adaptor will allow you to combine the audio from both mics and send the mixed feed to both left and right channels of your camera OR you can choose to keep each microphone isolated on its own channel. This option requires the purchase of an adaptor and some professional cables, though. If you do go with Option 3, remember that you're feeding the output of the microphones to just one camera. However, your second camera will still need to record audio (you'll be using this camera's audio as a reference only - I'll get to this in just a moment) so make sure the onboard microphone contained in the camera is working.
No matter how you record the audio, keep in mind that you're going to need to synch the tapes from the two cameras during your edit. One technique that will help is to record a very recognizable sound on each tape, a sound you can later use to match your tape positions. If you have a clapper, (you know, the small slate with a handle that slaps the top of the slate, used in motion pictures), that'll be just fine. If you don't have a clapper, use your (or your subject's) own two hands. Start both cameras recording, wait a few seconds, and then clap once, as loudly as you can. Do this each time you start recording. You now have audible reference points on each tape.
SYNCHING TAPES
First of all, you'll need editing software that provides a timeline with a number of video and audio layers. After you digitize your videotapes, you're ready to begin. The first step is to create a "rough edit" during which you synch up all your tapes. Let's say your two-shot is on camera 1. Import tape 1 from camera 1 into video/audio track one. Find your first clap (you'll hear it, of course, but you should also be able to see it clearly on the audio waveform displayed on the audio track) and mark the point with a clip marker. Next, import your close-ups from camera 2. Find the first clap on this tape and then mark it. Finally, line up the two markers.
Now, play the two tapes together on the timeline. If you don't hear any echo, you're right on the money. If you do hear an echo, you may need to shift one of the tapes back or forward by a frame or two. Once the tapes are synched, group them together using your editing software. Grouping guards against accidentally shifting the position of one of the tapes and losing audio synch as a result.
Once the tapes are synched, create another timeline, sequence or project. Use your rough edit as a source and cut and paste segments from your rough cut into the new timeline as you create your final program.
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Drop a pebble in the water...
Drop a pebble in the water; just a splash and it is gone;
But there's a half-a-hundred ripples circling on and on,
Spreading, spreading, from the center, flowing on out to the sea
And there's no way of telling where the end is going to be...
- Anonymous
On October 5, 2006, during the opening session of the annual conference for the Association of Personal Historians, I experienced a keynote address that was the most inspiring I've ever heard. The speaker was Bob Welch. He's a columnist for The Register-Guard newspaper in Eugene, Oregon, and an author. His talk chronicled his experiences researching and writing his book, American Nightingale - The Story of Frances Slanger, Forgotten Heroine of Normandy.
Frances Slanger was the first American nurse to die after the D-Day landings. She was killed the night after writing a letter to Stars and Stripes, a letter that praised American GIs and, in turn, inspired many of those soldiers to write letters in response. It's a fascinating, inspiring and heartwarming story. And what I'd like to do is focus on a small part of that story: the poem you see above.
A copy of the poem was found in Slanger's "chapbook," a scrapbook-like volume filled with writings and poems she held dear. As Welch pointed out in his address, it's a poem that speaks volumes to those of us dedicated to preserving personal and family stories and histories.
That's because we're the pebbles. When you start out to create a family or personal history, you create an initial splash. And the ripples from that splash, your efforts, can produce unexpected and delightful results.
In my own case, I never would have dreamt back in 1998 that the video biography I produced about my grandmother's life would impact my family as greatly as it did. The video continues to provide comfort to the children who miss her dearly. At least one grandchild included the video in a history project at his school. And, years later, it helped spawn Family Legacy Video, Inc., helping others preserve their precious histories. So the ripples continue to this day.
And, as the ripples of your efforts continue to spread, you'll find you inspire others to tell their stories. There's just no end to this personal history "ripple effect." It will continue for years, and generations, to come.
So go ahead. Drop a pebble in the water. Do it today.
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