Since we started this journey into making our own family history video to be archived, we have tried our best to teach you how to digitize every type of medium (photos, 8mm film, slides, negatives, etc.) and how to capture new footage interviewing family members. In Wednesday’s blog, we likened the movie Boyhood to our family history stories. 

Speaking of boyhood…This week is our grandson’s 15th birthday (see picture.)  It was such fun going through our digitized old tapes to give him a video of himself on his first birthday and the following few months.  Doing that exercise on each family birthday this year has been a wonderful side benefit to digitizing all the videos and pictures that make up our lives.

So here’s your ‘to do’ for this week:

As you go about digitizing your photos and videos to add to the family history archives, don’t forget to enjoy the here and now.  Take more photos and videos as you see family and friends.  Those will be treasures one day. Call it your Labor Day of love.

In school, we always learned that a good story has a beginning, a middle, a climax and an end.  Since families’ histories technically go back to the birth of mankind, it will be difficult to start at the beginning.  And since you are alive to gather and tell your family’s stories, there really isn’t an end.  Some families have a bit of drama or a defining moment that affected and changed the lives of many of those that followed, but many will have a difficult time pinpointing a person or event.  That leaves most of us with a middle. Hmmm.  What are we supposed to do to make our story compelling?

Has anyone seen Boyhood?  It tells the “story” of a boy from the age of six to young adulthood.  The filmmaker shot a few weeks per year over a period of 12 years using the same cast.  This way he could capture the reality of these people and their relationships growing over that period.  Um.  Isn’t that what we do when we capture our family’s history?  The difference is that we work and research really hard to find our history and the proper names of our ancestors, where they settled and possibly why they left one place and went to another.

The reality of Richard Linklater’s work is groundbreaking for the film industry but it is par for the course in the genealogy and family history world.  No beginning, no real end, no huge climax that needed a hero to step in and win over the bad guys; just a collection of day-to-day activities that make up our lives.

There is buzz about Boyhood winning an Oscar. While I don’t think any of us will win Oscars for our family history videos, I find true reality much more compelling.  

It’s been seven weeks since our last ‘recap and refocus’ blog.  The first six weeks began our journey to capture, digitize and archive your family’s history and stories in a video and accompanying book that can be accessed by generations yet to come.  Those weeks were mainly about checking what we had, digitizing photos and interviewing. The second seven weeks made it a priority and looked at how to digitize the odd or non-traditional.

Week 8. We made it a priority.  We got “Around to it.” We learned how to organize and tag the scans we were taking by changing the titles and adding comments to the ‘Properties’ of the digitized copy. We realized that ANYTHING we do now will be appreciated by future generations.  We began to schedule time each day, week, or month to scan and organize our scans.

Week 9. We learned a bit about taking pictures so we could capture the non-traditional memorabilia. We set up a home ‘studio’ with simple, everyday supplies and a camera.

Week 10. We learned how to digitize negatives and slides.  (video)

Week 11. We learned how to digitize the odd-sized negatives from old medium format film. (video)

Week 12. We spoke about taking time to reconnect with family.  That always brings up new stories and new things to scan or photograph.  Make taking time to reconnect a habit either with a yearly reunion or a monthly phone call or whatever works for your family.  Be sure to have your camcorder with you should the gaggle gather.

Weeks 13 and 14. We learned first ‘to do the math’ to see if digitizing your family’s 8mm movies could be sent to a professional or should be a do-it-yourself project.  Then we learned to do it ourselves. (video)

There are a couple more things that might need to be digitized - like voice recordings, stories or books or songs written by or performed by your family, and certainly all your research on the family tree – but you should have a good amount of family history and heirlooms digitized now.  If not, there’s no time like now to begin this journey of recording your family history and archiving it for future generations.