Life Story Lessons From Bilbo Baggins

The rise to prominence of one Bilbo Baggins has thrust genealogy and the recording of life stories into the limelight. First, it was Lord of the Rings – now on video – and then came (and continues to come) The Hobbit (itself now out on video). Because Bilbo is, right down to the soles of his hairy, oversized feet, a family man and a personal historian.

True, Bilbo has no wife or children of his own (that history records) but Bilbo adopts a son (Frodo) and is as devoted to his kith and kin as ever a person was. No one knows their lineage better, or throws better parties for the relatives, or struggles to get right the dictates of etiquette, or gives better presents to nieces and nephews than Mr. Bilbo Baggins.

Speaking to his assembled cousins on one famous occasion (his Eleventy First birthday in point of fact) he says, “I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”

Which, if you can tease it out, is a statement of regret that Bilbo doesn’t know his relatives as well as he should—and has judged them a little too harshly in the past. Sounds about right, doesn’t it?

And while Bilbo has a busy life surviving trolls, finding a magic ring, outwitting a dragon, going where no hobbit has gone before, he takes the time to write all about it. He decides to set down the lessons his life’s events hold for the benefit of those who will come later (like us). (Doing so in a book that has since become a “life story video” you might say!) Thus we have our first lesson in family history from Bilbo:

Hobbit Lesson 1: Do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart. Teach them to your children and to their children.

This is, of course, the “really big idea” of personal history: Experience life, and pass on your wisdom.  Actually, this lesson, drawn from The Hobbit, is pretty close to a lesson contained in that other good book—you know, the Good Book (Deuteronomy 4:9 to be specific.)

Now, safely home and sitting by the fire on autumn evenings, with the sound of the kettle hanging over the hearth as his music, Bilbo begins to write his life story. And the memoir that Bilbo pens “in his thin, wandering hand” about his tussles with Smaug and his falling out with the dwarfs is to be titled: “There and Back Again, a Hobbit’s Holiday”. Which name proves that hobbits were as fond of alliteration as (the much taller) men and women of today. And this gives us our second lesson in presenting family history:

Hobbit Lesson 2: Choose an interesting and engaging title for your life story.

Bilbo knew well his hobbit forebears and many of their stories.  In his “life story” he tells us all about his mother, the famous Belladonna Took, one of three remarkable daughters of the Old Took. And of his father’s side, the Bagginses, he tells us that they were actually more respectable but less rich.

And we have, thanks to Bilbo, a remarkably detailed family tree going back several generations with those who attended his famous party helpfully underlined (Appendix C – Lord of the Rings book).  Few appreciate that Mr Baggins was a proto-genealogist! So:

Hobbit Lesson 3: Tell the story about your own life but do not ignore progenitors.

Now, some sixty years of peace and prosperity pass and still Bilbo has not finished his life story memoir! Dear oh dear. Hobbits are a bit like that. But then things get really complicated (the rise of Sauron, the Black Riders and such, depicted so vividly in the video). Bilbo will never finish his memoir now. What is to be done?

Well, on the advice of his life story writing coach (you would know him as Gandalf the Wizard), Bilbo decides to leave the compromised safety of his hobbit hole (with the round door) and travel to a quieter, more restful place. He goes to the house of Elrond, the elf. Here he finds the quiet to put the finishing touches to the work and supplies our next rule:

Hobbit Lesson 4: Never give up. Endure setbacks and periods of languor but finish the work at all costs! Find a different place to write if necessary.

Middle Earth will experience all kinds of torments, shared in and fought by Bilbo’s nephew, Frodo, that Bilbo will play no part in (see Rings, Lord of the). Civilization teeters on the brink of total destruction but is saved just in time. Bilbo spends the rest of his days living in the house of Elrond with the elves (snoozing and smoking pipe-fulls of tobacco). And there, in Rivendell, Bilbo’s life story memoir — a book that we have come to know as The Hobbit — might have stayed and eventually become lost never to have re-emerged in its glorious life story video format!

But the singular memoir was not lost. Bilbo entrusts his precious life story There and Back Again to his nephew Frodo. He, in turn, entrusts it to his doughty lifelong companion Sam Gamgee. Which gives us our final lesson:

Hobbit Lesson 5: Ensure your life story is placed in a safe set of hands.  If doubtful of that, make lots of copies.

Do see Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey on video. Once the impact of the film’s many whizz-bang effects has faded, you will be left with the story of one small, modest hobbit. A story that you would never have known had he not taken the time to create a life story memoir.

Filed under: Biographies, Videos and films, film and video

Leave Something of Value: Life Stories

We spend a lot of time worrying about money, don’t we? First, do we have enough for ourselves? Should we work more or work longer; are we saving enough; can we afford that trip; and how much should we spend on ourselves and on gifts?

Later, the questions change. We start to reflect on our mortality and our legacy and we think about preplanning for the inevitable. Have we made our funeral or memorial arrangements; do we have our wills and estate plans in place? And how much will we be leaving to the children and grandchildren? Very often these are dollar and cents questions.

But is money our greatest and most important legacy?

According to a major study by the Allianz Life Insurance Company, money is not our greatest legacy. And its not just Allianz who is telling us this, it’s us! During the course of last year, Allianz commissioned the 2012 “American Legacies Pulse Study” – an update of their groundbreaking 2005 study. The results may surprise you – they certainly surprised me.

It turns out that money is not our greatest legacy – it is our life stories:

Eighty-six percent of “baby boomers” (age 47-66) and 74 percent of “elders” (age 72 and older) said that family stories are the most important aspect of their legacy. Family stories! Money and the passing of personal possessions is still important, but less so: 64 percent of baby boomers and 58 percent of elders checked that box.

This echos the findings in 2005, with 77 percent of both boomers and elders citing the importance of family values and life lessons as the most important part of their legacy.

Jane from Your Story Here helps Alyce tell her story.

Hmm. Life Stories. They don’t cost much. But do the kids really agree? Don’t the children have an expectation of being taken care of – at least a little bit? Not according to the Allianz study.

Of more than a thousand people surveyed, only 4% of the (adult) children said they felt they were owed an inheritance. (Actually, its their parents who put the pressure on themselves here: 14% of the parents said they felt the owed their children an inheritance.)

Family stories help the children and grandchildren get to know us just a bit when we were young – getting things right and (even better) getting things wrong; family stories that are funny or serious; family stories which contain lessons or wisdom or history. Family stories humanize us and the kids – especially when they have grown up themselves – value them more and more.

Let’s all try a bit harder to preserve our life stories.

Kids, take the time to question and listen – don’t just arrive in time for the turkey then settle in front of the flat screen for the big game. Come early and help with the preparation and learn the traditions. Parents, make time and create opportunities to reflect and pass on some of your history – and try not to lecture or judge (hard I know – for me anyway!).

It turns out our greatest legacy is not our money, it is ourselves – passed on to our children and our grandchildren through our time and our stories. Take the time to preserve your life stories to video. It is your greatest gift.

Filed under: family history video

Lincoln, Death, and the Family History Enterprise

You would be excused for thinking that Abraham Lincoln – whose life has lately been the subject of a critically successful and popular motion picture from Steven Spielberg and starring Daniel Day-Lewis – had no interest in family history and genealogy:

“I don’t know who my grandfather was”, Abraham Lincoln famously said, “I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.”

Being as how us folks at Your Story Here LLC create family history videos, this comes as a disappointment. But is it true?

Not knowing your family history is not the same as not being interested. And there were more than one or two impediments to knowledge about Lincoln’s family forbears – including the death of his mother when he was only nine. Hard work with an ax followed in the back woods of Indiana and the general outlines of a difficult, pioneering upbringing with little education, dislike for his father, much sickness (including the insanity of a childhood friend) – and even more death – are well enough known.
The Spielberg film (not yet out on video) does not spend much time on Lincoln’s early years. But the truth is that Lincoln was interested in family history and penned a very affecting poem of his own boyhood called “My Childhood Home I See Again”:

My childhood’s home I see again / And sadden with the view;
And still, as memory crowds my brain / There’s pleasure in it too.

The past for Abraham Lincoln was so littered with death that thoughts of olden times could not help but “sadden”. That grandfather that he says he did not know was in fact killed by Indians in 1786. His mother died – most likely of brucellosis. But he had a brother, right? Sure: Tommy, he died when Lincoln was three. His sister? She helped raise him. But she died too – in her twenties giving birth. In short order, he lost his mother and both siblings. During his own lifetime, “family” and “history” became virtually synonymous.

O Memory! thou midway world / ‘Twixt earth and paradise,
Where things decayed and loved ones lost / In dreamy shadows rise.

“Loved ones lost” – it was a bitter reality for Abraham Lincoln and little wonder that he felt the greater need to look forward down the road, hoping for better times, rather than linger too long in the past.

Lincoln invited none of his own family to his wedding in 1842. Was that because of any disinterest in family or more because most of his immediate family was dead? Sure, his father was alive but Abe did have “issues” with him – refusing even to visit him on his deathbed.

We see this occasionally in our work providing family history video services – conflict between successful men and strong fathers that persists right until the end. Too much should not be inferred from that circumstance to Lincoln’s attitude towards family history generally. And political expediency would also have played a part. If Lincoln was rough-hewn and barely fit for polite company, his father was likely to have been even more so.
Looking backwards then, Lincoln had a family tree marked most by branches lopped off in their infancy and limbs that shriveled in their incipience. He had higher hopes for himself and knew that his work would ensure history’s remembrance. He also hoped that through his own children the family tree would grow large and prosper; if there was little enough family history in his past there would be plenty in his future surely. No, Lincoln’s family’s future would prove equally stunted and bleak.

Before his own death in 1865, Abraham Lincoln was forced to endure the death of his son Willie just after his twelfth birthday in 1862. Presiding over the Civil War charnel house, death came to the White House and took the most innocent of victims. (Willie’s older brother and Lincoln’s second oldest son Eddie had already died of TB in 1850 just before his fourth birthday.)

Writing about the lingering insanity of his childhood friend, Lincoln was doubtless thinking about his own lost ones:

O death! Thou awe-inspiring prince / That keepst the world in fear;
Why dost thos tear more blest ones hence / And leave him ling’ring here?

Two sons and no daughters survived Abraham Lincoln. One remaining son – Tad – died at the age of 18, six years after his own death. The last son Robert survived into adulthood and had children but the Lincoln family line died out after Lincoln’s great grandson died without issue.

So it’s likely that Abraham Lincoln was not uninterested in family history. It is more a case that family history was not interested in him. Even more: Fate and events conspired to ensure that the lights of past and future generations of the Lincoln family were extinguished well before their time.

Lincoln himself created enough history for any family but Death ensured that he received very little assistance from either progenitors or heirs.

The Spielberg film has yet to be released on video but videos on Lincoln are legion – many with a very decent treatment of his family history. Some of the videos you may be able to access can be found at the Illinois Humanities Council.

Filed under: death, family history video, Videos and films, history

Life Stories on Video from the Inland Empire

The recent special exhibition entitled “When I’m Sixty Four” at the Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art at Chaffey College in San Bernardino County, California gave a chance for local seniors to recount some of their life stories on video. And how astonishing those stories turned out to be!

Originally conceived as an oral history project involving Storycorps, life story video specialists Your Story Here LLC stepped in to video record twelve remarkable stories from locals 64 years and older.

The result is a treasure trove of personal and cultural history, and a 20 minute documentary produced and edited – pro bono – by Your Story Here entitled “Here I Am – Extraordinary Lives in the Inland Empire” which will shortly be playing at the exhibition.

Each participant brought a unique blend of history, circumstance and perspective. And prompted by a slate of questions put together specially for the project by Your Story Here and Professor Catherine Bacus from Chaffey College’s Gerontology program, the stories just came tumbling out:

Blind in one eye from a childhood accident, Gordon A. never expected overseas duty – avenging Pearl Harbor. So he decided to get married. Eleven days later, and for the next 25 months, he was on board ship fighting island to island all the way to Okinawa. He laughs now at the improbability of it all.

Your Story Here LLC was a patron of the recent “When I’m Sixty Four” exhibition at Chaffey College.

Meanwhile, Aiko U. – born in Arlington, California and a loyal American high school junior – was being rounded up by the FBI, along with her family, to be interned in the Arizona hinterlands for the duration of WWII. Asked if she was made about what had been done to her and her family she said, “What could we do? It was the government”.

Not all the “When I’m Sixty-Four” life stories recorded to video are dark. Mary Martha B. remembers learning to drive when she was just nine years old – and getting her license shortly after. “I was tall as a child,” she shrugs.

Pat Y. grew up poor in Pittsburgh. “It was like Cinderella Man”, she says. “You know, we were so cold we had to use our coats as blankets” Her ticket out was dance. And when Pat was just seventeen she won a place with the famous Ice Capades and went on tour all across North America.

These stories are exactly what life story video is all about. They reveal fascinating aspects of our seniors that most of our younger folks simply have no idea about. They come from “ordinary” folks who went through extraordinary circumstances and achieved extraordinary feats. And they shed a fresh and startlingly personal light on that most dramatic of centuries – the Twentieth.

As that warm Fall Saturday at Chaffey College wore on, the stories kept coming: Arpad S. from Ontario defected from Soviet controlled Hungary by stealing a MIG17 and flying it to Belgium! The plane is now at the Smithsonian. Sadly, Arpad’s friend was shot down flying his own stolen plane in another direction. Once in the US, Arpad built a successful career as a software engineer.

As a boy in his native Italy, Alta Loma resident Fred R. dodged Allied bombs, only to be saved by the enemy – a German tank commander. Tall, proud, and still obviously very strong, he tears up now to remember that fateful day. “And I don’t even remember his name”.

And Donna A. from Claremont tells how she capped a life time of service by helping to usher in democracy in South Africa. The trip, where she got to meet Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, was just another instance of Donna and her husband’s tireless community service initiatives.

Each of the participants will be presented with a DVD of their entire interview from Your Story Here Life Story Video as well as a copy of the short documentary: “Here I Am – Extraordinary Lives in the Inland Empire”.

If you have a story worth preserving, why not give Your Story Here a call?

Filed under: Biographies, Personal Documentaries, family legacy documentary, veterans video, video memoir

Tribute Videos: Audio Tips

Huh? Audio for video tributes? I thought you were the video guys!? Well, yes, but there is an audio track (or three or four) in all our life story video projects and there are audio issues in every project. So, for those of you thinking about your own foray into video biography and related genres, I thought I would offer these audio tips.

Microphones
For a lot of people getting started in the area we specialize in – tribute videos and family history video – the video part goes fine. But they rely on the video camera’s inbuilt microphone and the sound is definitely not fine. Why? Because the pickup pattern for an inbuilt mic is very wide – and that fact, combined with the camera’s auto gain function (low noises are automatically boosted in volume), means that all kinds of extraneous noises get added. The result can sound like the interview took place just outside the monkey cage of the Bronx Zoo.

But we can fix it, right? We just take the audio into a program like Apple’s Soundtrack Pro, or Adobe’s Soundbooth, isolate the background noise and, well, reduce it! Not really. While you can make bad audio a little less bad, you cannot make bad audio good.

So your best approach is to invest in a decent Lavalier mic and a reputable shotgun mic. If money is no object, then grab a couple of wireless mics while you are at it. Always use headphones when recording and, if you know what you are doing, turn off the auto settings and set your audio manually – cutting out problems that the camera’s auto gain can cause.

Some advance planning for your tribute video audio can mean the difference between cacophony & sweet harmony.

On Location
Ok, you decide you are going to include some recreational, vocational or occupational footage in your tribute video. That means you are going to be out on location somewhere. In nature. With planes, trains and automobiles. And their noise.

There are a few things you can do to reduce extraneous noises on location. Use a wind baffle or windscreen on your mics for one. Filming early in the morning is another – it is usually better light, there is less wind, and if you are early enough there will be less human-generated noise. Also, if you are recording interviews outside later in the day – and you get a burst of traffic noise – you may simply have to ask the question again. And again, if necessary.

They say that as an audience we are more tolerant of bad video than bad audio…

While you are out and about, it is always a good idea to record some general background noise (“nat sound”) while you are there. You may want to add some to your interview footage later (assuming you have been successful in screening out background noise in the first place).

Natural sound can also be useful if you are planning to incorporate images or other graphics with your location-shot footage while editing your tribute video. How? Well, in editing, you may want to transition from the location shots to your images. A sensible approach is to place some of the background noise under the images (plus some music, probably) so you don’t get a dramatic change in the sound tone and so that you maintain aural continuity. Also, background noise from location can serve as a “patch” if you need to cover some unexpected and unwelcome sound like an overhead aircraft.

Some Editing Suite Fixes
Once you are ready to edit your tribute video you are likely to run into other audio issues, many of which can be easily solved in editing. Sound too low on a clip? Export the audio to Soundtrack Pro or Soundbooth and simply normalize it.

Maybe you have a number of audio tracks stacked up – and the overall sound is too high. Mark the audio peaks and, using your audio meters and working with the individual tracks, bring down the combined level to around -6dB. Another issue: Interviews made with different cameras or different mics will probably have different sound levels – a quick fix is to select all the audio tracks and apply a normalization gain.

Fixing Worst Case Audio (Call the Foley Artist)
We recently had the privilege of shooting a tribute video for a couple for whom the garden was an enormous interest. The challenge was that the front part of the garden, which had a number of topiary animals, was situated on somewhat busy road – with the more than occasional car roaring past.

The footage we recorded of the subject clipping these crazy animals looked excellent. But at certain key moments a car would rush past and the audio became unusable. Simply placing natural sound under the footage (and muting the original audio) did not solve the problem, because we needed the subject’s footfalls as well as the sound of the secateurs as she clipped the topiary animals.

The best answer was to strip all the audio and replace it with natural sound and sound effects (footfalls and scissors in this case – kindly provided by Footage Firm). The result was perfect.

Other Tribute Video Audio Issues
These days, editing suites seem to be able to take almost any media format and it’s all grist for the mill. But with audio from disparate sources in disparate formats, we often find we get better results if we convert to 48.0 KHz, uncompressed audio (“aiff”) before bringing it into the edit. To be honest, we are not sure if the improvement is real or imagined, but given the importance of audio to any video tribute project it’s worth the extra step (you also avoid the need to render out the audio).

Another audio issue for tribute videos arises when it comes time to output your magnum opus for the web. You will be given a number of audio options, some of which are designed to save you on file size. Audio, though, is such a small constituent of file size but such an important factor in overall perception of quality there is really no choice. Always use “best” settings and the highest bit rate you can find (320 kbps in our case).

Conclusion
Audio can be the red-headed step child of video tributes. Yet sharp, clean audio is arguably more important to the overall quality of your life story video than good video. So, take the time to take the care and put audio at the top of your list in every tribute video.

Filed under: DIY Tips & Advice, tribute videos, video tributes

Life Story Video: 2012 Best College Commencement Addresses

So much of our work here at Your Story Here Life Story Video – making biography videos for clients across the country – focuses on lives nearing their conclusion. But today I want to put the spotlight on the moment at which many lives finally start to get serious – the college graduation.

College graduation ceremonies are usually held in Spring and right now – May 2012 – we are slap bang in the middle of the Commencement Season. And this year being a Presidential election year, the two candidates have both already had a turn at the podium – Mitt Romney doing the honors at Liberty University and Barack Obama at Barnard College.

But it is the funny star of Glee – Jane Lynch – who really dominates the 2012 season with her address to Smith College’s graduating class, proving that in a commencement address humor will carry all before it.

Filed under: Biographies

DIY Family History Video Pt 3: Post Production Choices

OK, this is the third part of our series on DIY life story, tribute video and family history video. Today, we are going to tell you how to handle some of the bigger questions that will arise in the post-production phase of your family history video project.

Part 1 of this series covered a slew of choices that you will face in the pre-production phase of your personal documentary. And Part 2 of this blog series took you, dear reader, through key choices that are likely to present themselves in the production phase of a tribute video.

Filed under: DIY Tips & Advice, family history video, DIY, family history video

How to Make a Tribute Video Pt 2: Production Phase

This is the second part of our series on making your own life story or “tribute” video. The first part – DIY Life Story Video: Preproduction – looked at some of the major choices as you plan your tribute video.

Now, we move on to the main course: location, make up, sound and lighting, and video recording! Also known as the “production” phase in the film making process.

Filed under: DIY Tips & Advice, tribute videos, DIY, video tribute

DIY Life Story Video: Pre-Production

You will find a number of great tips and pieces of advice on this blog for making your own life story video – just browse “Recent Posts” or search the archive using “DIY”. Today we are going to go a little deeper and give you part 1 of a 3 part series on making your own life story video.

Filed under: DIY Tips & Advice, video transfers, DIY, documentary film maker, personal documentary

Irish History on Video: Divine Life Stories

Tom Devine lives in New Jersey and has ancestors who fought for Irish independence against the British. One of them was caught and jailed, then fled to America. Tom’s parents followed suit some 30 years later and created a large family, of which Tom is the oldest boy.

Tom’s mother has the story of the family’s Irish patriots, which include Tom’s grandfather (far left).

She heard it directly from him, her father, who has since passed away.

Needing to know more, Tom went back to Ireland in 2009 with both his parents to visit some of the old family haunts.

He took along his video camera and shot scenes of the countryside, gravestones, farmhouses, churches, and his parents reminiscing.

Filed under: Biographies, DIY, video tribute