Video
New blog carnival: Digital Storytelling
At Creating Lifelong Learners, Mathew kicks off the Digital Storytelling Blog Carnival. The carnival is monthly, and is geared toward video (if you’ve seen my movie, Interviewing my Mom about her Mom, you know that ‘video’ is subject to wider interpretations). A good set of links if you’re interested in telling stories using digital video. Submit entries here.
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Afterwards
• Video
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Library’s digital storytelling station
Covina library has digital storytelling station to collect stories about city’s 125-year history. Cool. It’s local, very local. I’ll go and see. It’s from a grant award. If it goes well, more of these may pop up in libraries in the State of California.
After winning a competitive grant from the California State Library this summer, the Covina Public Library received a “digital storytelling station,” a massive cabinet full of digital equipment valued at about $3,000.
The equipment, which includes a new Apple iMac computer, a digital camera, a printer, a scanner, a tape deck, a record player and a DVD player, was awarded to the library with the hope of documenting Covina’s history through the eyes of those who lived it.
“We are very excited about this great library program that uses cutting-edge information technology to explore and preserve California’s untold history,” said Susan Hildreth, state librarian of California. “We look forward to seeing the results of the pilot program, and we’ll consider expanding the initiative in 2008 and 2009.”
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Audio
• Oral history in the news
• Video
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Whither Audio or Video
Recording family stories: Which is better, audio or video? This question came up last week at the L.A. Podcasters meetup while talking to a podcaster (Karen “KFC” Blanchette, aka Podchick) about this site’s topic—recording and preserving family memories.
She asked me, “Why not video?”
I’ve been asked that before.
I talked about the barrier that video imposes—how things need to look good. The interviewee has to make him or herself presentable, and the environment also has to look good. I said, “The last couple of family members I interviewed, it would have been much harder to do on video. One was in a room that wasn’t photogenic at all, and when I interviewed my great aunt, she wore her robe and sat on the couch. I don’t think that she’d have let me videotape her wearing a robe. My boyfriend’s mother, who’d had cancer and lost hair from chemotherapy, always said, ‘Don’t take my picture!’ so there’s no way she would have talked on camera.”
KFC nodded. She’d recently visited a family member (Dad?) and videotaped an interview with him (cool!). KFC told me about getting ready—going to a... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Audio
• Do it: Yourself
• Interviewing
• Video
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CES and Macworld are nigh
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and Macworld are this next week. Various news websites are all a-twitter about what news and annoucements will be coming out of each show. Who’s going to introduce what? I’ll be following along, on the lookout for whatever news comes out of each show, especially as it affects tools for recording and preserving family memories.
On the Macworld front, there’ll be software and hardware announcements and new releases. Same thing with CES, only it’ll be more hardware than software.
I wish I were there to speak face to face to the vendors to ask how the new new new stuff they’ve been working on is supposed to last for decades, yea, even for generations. This is a whole part of industry that thrives on innovation, leaving behind yesterday’s woo-woo cool thing in order to focus on the next new hot thing. I mean, really.. they just have to make their quarterly numbers.
I’m not attending either show, but feel a bit nostalgic about both: My first trade show ever was working at Comdex in Las Vegas (alas no more; it was the granddaddy show. I think that CES is now the king show), quickly followed by Macworld. That was a few lifetimes ago in 1992-1993, when... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Audio
• Audio: Hardware
• Digitality
• Longevity
• Video
• Video: Hardware
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aaaand Action! This is your life
Starring in your own movie about your own life. Marsha King of the Seattle Times on the trend of people to hire others to make custom movies, books, and other biographical memoriabilia. Mentions the Association of Personal Historians.
As a man who rarely talks about himself, this wasn’t his decision ... to be a movie star.
His adult children, nudged by a grandkid who heard about the idea, hired a film company to capture his personal story on a professionally produced DVD, complete with live interviews, old photos and music.
“He just had a lot of stuff to tell. We’ve been wanting to get it down on paper,” daughter-in-law Kathy Echelbarger said. “We just thought it’s a great way to get all this family history.”
The explosion of interest in tracing one’s roots has given rise to another phenomenon. Ordinary people—particularly baby boomers and their elderly parents—are hiring filmmakers and writers to immortalize their histories on pricey videos and books that can look good enough for the History Channel or bookstore shelves.
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Do it: Hiring Help
• Personal History
• Video
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Boots on the Ground: The Technology I Use
James L Clark, (US Army Civil Affairs soldier serving in Iraq), draws his personal history of war inspiration inspired by past war historians, and takes full advantage of personal media to record his personal history of the war in Iraq. He describes the equipment he uses to make photos, video, and audio recordings.
Not many people think about their deployment as being anything more than just that—a deployment. They accept their responsibility, duty, and privilege to serve our country in a war zone as “just part of the job.” The problem with this thinking is that it ignores the incredible opportunity that each soldier has to document not only “the” war but “their” war.
Dr. Forest C. Pogue was an official US Army historian during WWII and attained the rank of master sergeant. He was a proponent of “oral history” techniques and collected many such histories from the war during his career. During D-Day, Dr. Pogue (then SGT Pogue) interviewed wounded soldiers about their experiences both on the transport from the beaches and on the hospital ship anchored off the coast.
[...]To me, history is a living, breathing thing; it is the story of mankind. History offers a glimpse into who we are, what... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Audio
• Audio: Hardware
• Personal History
• Photographs
• Video
• Video: Hardware
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From camcorder to iPod
Engadget previews Bella Catapult, a portable digital encoder “that will let you toss those MiniDV cassettes straight out of your bag and replace them with your iPod or nearly any other USB 2.0-compliant storage system.” Due to ship 2nd half of 2006. Price: under $300. Looks sweet.
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Video
• Video: Hardware
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