There’s one thing I don’t remember, for sure: the first time I met her. From what I’ve heard, that first meeting was probably only a few hours after I was born.
That was over twenty-one years ago. Grandmama talked about how whenever she would tell one of her friends that she was about to become a grandmother, they would say that it was going to be so much fun.
But the first time she saw me after I was born, I was sleeping. After that, I woke up, ate, and went back to sleep. I didn’t make a good first impression as far as the whole fun-and-exciting being a grandmother thing goes.
Then I started growing, becoming more aware of the environments around me. My Dad, Mom, and I lived in the Atlanta area for the first months of my life, so I was close to where Grandmama lived. She used to talk and laugh about watching me after I learned to walk and run.
I really don’t remember much about my early relationship with her. My family moved to North Carolina (where my brother was born, Tyler—who managed to get into a bunch of the pictures here, since I’m behind the camera more than in front), then to Tennessee, then finally back to Georgia when I was four. That’s where my memories of Grandmama really begin.
We lived an apartment in Norcross, near Atlanta, about an hour or so from where she lived in Athens. Since we were so close, we went to visit somewhat often… And that hour drive always felt like half a day to my little mind.
Grandmama lived in one side of an apartment duplex, kind of on the outskirts of Athens. At the time, she worked for the University of Georgia as an office secretary or something… I’m not sure what exactly she did. I went to work with her once—probably not even a half day, looking back at it I’m guessing she just needed to take care of a few things. She tasked me with drawing on the whiteboard with dry-erase markers.
We grandkids—five of us altogether, between myself, Tyler, and three cousins—used to take turns spending the weekend with Grandmama. She didn’t have a grandchild every weekend, but from what I remember, I myself probably spent a weekend with her every four or five months.
Grandmama would come pick me up at my house on Friday afternoon, and then we’d make that looong drive to her house. Sometimes on the way, we’d stop at a grocery store and pick out TV dinners for supper. I never ever got those at home (and looking at the ingredients lists now, I know why), so it was a special treat. Sometimes we’d rent a movie to watch while we ate.
The nightly bubble bath was a tradition at Grandmama’s house. She’d fill up the tub with hot water and plenty of bubbles; it was so much fun! There were various water toys to play with, and of course, what’s a bubble bath without a bubble beard or go-tee?
At bedtime, she’d tuck me in, then read to me. Sometimes I’d pick out a book from a basket of children’s books she had for us. But always, she’d read a chapter from the Bible (usually one of the Psalms). We’d pray together, she’d turn out the light, and I’d fall asleep… As soon as I stopped thinking about the googly-eyed monster under the bed. I never did see it, but to this day I’m sure that’s where it lived.
I would usually be up in the morning before Grandmama was—that’s how young energy goes, after all. She always kept at least four or five kinds of cold cereal in her pantry, so I’d get out of bed, go in the kitchen, and arrange all the boxes on the table. That mission accomplished, it was back into my bedroom until she got up, where I’d quietly play with toys from the blue, plastic toy crate from the closet. Every once in a while she would surprise us with a new toy in it.
After breakfast, Grandmama would get her second cup of coffee (she always reheated her coffee in the microwave, even straight out of the coffeepot) and go get dressed, put her makeup on, and do her hair for the day. Tyler and I dubbed her hair “big hair,” because that’s exactly what it was, a big bunch of curls from the rollers she’d wear to bed every night.
I loved the Saturdays I spent with her. Sometimes we’d go to a park, sometimes there would be some special event going on nearby to go to. It was usually the park, though; there were a couple in particular that we loved to go to. One was Bishop Park, which I called “Monster Park,” because one time I was playing with some kids there and pretending I was a monster.
Our most favorite one was Memorial Park, a mostly wooded place with a large pond in the middle. Grandmama always saved old pieces of bread so that we could feed the ducks, turtles, and fish whenever we went. We’d walk around the pond on a trail, throwing bits of bread at a duck or two swimming along nearby, or dropping some down into the water from a bridge. She’d let me play on the playground, and sometimes we’d stroll through a small wildlife zoo that was there.
Sometimes we’d drive down to Hodgeson’s Pharmacy, near the university, to get an ice cream cone. That was a special treat! I remember how it smelled like ice cream cones, how forever long it seemed to wait in line for our turn to order. And I remember how fun it was to sit on the park bench in the store, eating ice cream, sitting next to my Grandmama.
Grandmama’s mother—my Great Granny—lived in a retirement community a couple miles from her own apartment, and Saturday evening was the time we’d go visit her. We’d go out for pizza, or get pizza from Papa John’s (Grandmama’s favorite), then sit and visit and watch the baseball game on TV. Grandmama didn’t like driving after dark, so before it was too late we’d go back to her home where we did the nightly routine.
On Sundays, Grandmama took me to her church. I started playing violin when I was almost eight, so once I was able to play some songs from memory, she’d have me bring my violin along. I’d play one or two songs for the ladies in her Sunday School class. I can still vividly remember getting up and playing for them—usually a quiet, calm hymn, followed by a foot-stomping fiddle tune called “Bile Them Cabbages Down,” which Grandmama absolutely loved for me to play. I’m sure I wasn’t much help in getting the ladies into a worshipful attitude…
Grandmama loved beauty, especially the beauty of flowers. You could give her a bunch of random flowers, and she could arrange them into something the looked pretty. Inspired by her, I once made an arrangement myself…Which definitely didn’t come even close to what she could do. Perhaps it was because I used dandelions…
Her flower arrangements graced various parts of her church, bringing bright cheerfulness to various lobbies and hallways. She had a special touch with them, for sure. After retiring from her job at the University of Georgia, she worked part-time at a florist arranging silk flowers.
She had an eye for decorating, too. I still remember what her apartment looked like, and smelled like. After walking in through the entryway and front door, I’d be standing in her living room. On the left was a bookcase with metal-grate doors, the handles of which were rubber-banded together, partly to keep them closed, and partly to keep curious hands from opening and closing them—they were the noisiest bookcase doors I’ve ever heard. The top of the bookcase was always decorated for the season. During Christmas it’s where where her nativity set would sit.
Straight ahead was the kitchen, the place where many a wonderful Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner was shared by four generations of family (from Granny down to the cousins), where we laughed and talked over lasagna or ham or turkey—and the famous chocolate eclair.
To the right was the living room. There was a couch between its north-facing windows, a couple of recliners, lamp tables, and a cabinet with a TV on top. Opposite the couch was a fireplace. Grandmama loved having fires during the fall, and I loved it when she had them during our visits. I can still remember the rug on the floor, too, where Tyler and I would race toy cars along the lines while my Mama and Grandmama sat and talked.
In late 2001, my family moved to Illinois. That was hard for Grandmama—we were now about 13 hours away from her, which meant that visits came only two or three times a year.
She came to visit a year or two after we moved. We took her around to show her things, went to the zoo, and among other things, stopped at a huge pumpkin field so she could take a picture of it. That was the only time she came to visit; it was too far for her to drive, and besides this, she needed to be available to take care of Granny as she got older and could do less on her own.
To that end she moved to the retirement community where my Granny lived. She was glad to be out of her apartment duplex. That part of town was becoming more unsafe; her apartment had been broken into at least once.
Grandmama brought a freshness and life to Lanier Gardens. She was one of the younger people living there, I think, so her energy and friendliness quickly won her the love of everyone she met there. They appointed her to be their floor leader for several years, which she enjoyed as it gave her the opportunity to plan special events and help with decorating the floor.
I still loved visiting her there at her new apartment, though it wasn’t often, and the weekend visits had stopped after our move. Usually it was my Mom and brother and I visiting her. Sometimes we’d take a walk together, once in a while Tyler and I would play horseshoes while Grandmama and Mom watched and talked. And always the morning we’d leave, I’d run around her apartment writing and hiding notes for her to find after we were gone—in a coffee can, under a phone, behind a door—places where she’d find them later and be pleasantly surprised.
I’m not sure when, but sometime she began delivering Meals-on-Wheels once a week. Her assigned delivery place was an apartment building near downtown Athens, a housing project I think. I loved getting to go help her deliver the meals, and she, the ever-proud grandmother, absolutely loved getting to introduce her grandchildren to the people she served.
She wasn’t just serving them physically; along with the meals, she was delivering Christ’s love. Sometimes this was through a tract or note, always through her attitude. She cared about those people.
Grandmama was like that. She was outgoing—but didn’t think she was—and always concerned about other people. She loved Christ, and that’s what made the difference.
I know she had a lot of unanswered questions about life; mainly about why there was so much suffering. Looking back, I almost wonder if her questions were rhetorical. She went through a lot, so much more than I ever saw growing up, and much more than I’ll ever know about. But you’d never know that, because in spite of it she had the joy of the Lord in her life. She loved Him, and was committed to following Him.
She was a giver and a server, and an expert at those things. It was almost impossible for her to walk past an ungainly hodgepodge of flowers in a vase without stopping to transform them into something beautiful. She loved bringing beauty into other people’s lives, and involving her family in doing the same—evidenced by her taking us to deliver Meals-on-Wheels, or having my brother and I plant flowers in Granny’s little bitty patio yard.
My Grandmama was a beautiful person, and I love her dearly. She wasn’t perfect by any means. But Christ dwelt in her, and it was obvious. Many grandchildren love their grandparents…But most grandchildren don’t have the privilege of having a grandmother like Grandmama.
I was the first and the last of her grandchildren to be with her. At the beginning of spring in 2010, I had been working with some friends near Charleston, South Carolina. God moved in my heart, telling me it was time to go home…And instead of taking the direct route, I decided to go through Athens to spend a day or two with my Grandmama.
It was the first time I had ever visited her completely by myself like that. I got there on a Monday afternoon, spent the evening with her and Granny. I can’t exactly remember what we did most of the next day—we talked and perhaps went walking at Memorial Park—but I do remember that she lined up for me to play music during the chapel service that afternoon, and I’m glad for that.
In the evening Grandmama and I went out to get hot dogs and frosted oranges from The Varsity. For the uninitiated, The Varsity is a fast food restaurant with three locations total, and famous for how greasy it is. It was fun to eat there every once in a (long) while, though! We took the food back to her apartment and ate with Granny.
The next morning, I said my goodbye to her and left. It was always hard leaving her after a visit. That feeling of missing her would be there even before I’d give her the final hug before going out the door. We were close, she loved us, and we loved her.
And so, I left. She hadn’t even bothered in getting ready for the day; it was early, and she still had her robe on and rollers in her hair. I wouldn’t have ever guessed that that would be the last time I’d say goodbye to her here on earth, the last time I’d hug and kiss her.
Two-and-a-half weeks after my visit, on May 8, 2010, she got to go meet her Savior. She got to have all her questions about life answered; she got to rejoice in the presence of her Creator. “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.”
No more arthritis. No more wondering about the rich-versus-poor conundrum. No more questions about suffering. No more! She’s with the One Who knows all now; her imperfect human vision has been opened into perfect spiritual sight now.
And because of Christ, I can look forward to that as well.
My Grandmama was a beautiful woman. I wanted to be able to introduce my future wife and children to her someday; this little memoir will have to suffice when that time comes. I want future generations to be able to take a glimpse into her life. I want to remember her, always.
I love her so much, and I can say “love” in the present tense because I know that she is more alive now than she ever was when she lived in this sin-cursed world.
I remember Grandmama.
Technicolor recently released a picture style for Canon dSLRs:
“The Technicolor CineStyle™ is a Picture Style (profile) for Canon EOS DSLR cameras that optimizes the dynamic range in the image by leveraging the capabilities of the Canon imaging chipset. Cinematographers and their post-production partners will have greater flexibility in color grading and finishing their projects.”
Since I’m a believer in shooting flat, I jumped at this and installed the picture style on my 60D. The results? It’s the best flat picture style I’ve seen, ever. It gives a wider dynamic range compared to even the most neutral style I can create using Canon’s.
Check out Technicolor’s CineStyle page.
Here’s a quick comparison (click on a photo to view it larger):
Canon Standard
Canon Neutral
Technicolor CineStyle
And, here’s the CineStyle image, color corrected:
As you can see, the extremely flat image coming from CineStyle can be heavily graded — the example above approximately matches the image from Canon’s standard style, but with quite a bit more detail captured in the image.
Hat tip to Dominic DiMaria for finding this!
It’s been over a year since I cut my last demo reel, and since I was tired of it being outdated, I cut a new one. Here it is:
It features clips from the feature documentary I worked on last year, Rite of Passage. All footage was shot on dSLRs (7D and 60D, with the very first shot from a D5000).
Last weekend we visited with some good friends of ours who live in southern Illinois, very close to Shawnee National Forest. They took us hiking along Burden Creek to see the beautiful waterfalls and rock formations there.
These are my two favorite photos from the hike:
This was sooo cool. A group of people spontaneously began singing, and hundreds of us joined in singing patriotic songs and hymns. The video below is of us singing the National Anthem:
Okay, maybe more than a few. Try… 4,000.
Around 4,000 of us homeschoolers flocked to the Illinois state capitol yesterday to voice our disapproval of the proposed SB 136, which would negatively regulate our freedoms. I almost let a project deadline get in the way of my attending, but I’m so glad my Mom convinced me to go. It was a huge reminder to me that there are things in life worth standing up for, worth fighting to protect. Compared to most things, the “me” in my life is actually very small and not worth holding on to tightly.
If my children (and their children) are to enjoy freedom, it starts with me.
My brother and I have been building a snow tunnel underneath a massive drift in our pasture. It has two entrances (both about 10 feet long), and a room with a column in the middle for support.
We’re hoping to be able to see how long we can get the tunnel….We might be able to go another 50 feet in the drift, provided that the roof doesn’t collapse.
Here’s a video tour:
I think it was after my third year of attending Sforzando String Camp that I first had the idea of making a documentary about it.
For those reading this with no clue what Sforzando is, it’s a yearly one-week camp specifically for young Christian stringed-instrument musicians. My brother and I have attended it ever since 2005, the year after it was started.
The documentary was a fantastic idea at the time, and I wanted to jump into it the very next year. There was only one problem: I had no plan. I had a chance to talk very briefly to the camp director about it that next year, but it didn’t go any further than that. And I still had no idea how I would even begin to approach such a project.
A few weeks before 2009′s camp, a fellow camper contacted me through my site about the idea of a documentary. That’s when I discovered that there were more people than just me who wanted to see a project like that happen. And that’s when I started to think about a creative approach to it.
Below is a narrative on what we did from project begin to project end (well… almost project end — it’s getting close to done). I learned a lot going through the project, and hopefully others can glean some ideas from the process I went through.
Pre-production
• Story Planning
Obviously, it’s hard to write a script for something that happens unpredictably in real-time. The only way to approach documenting such things is to have a general idea of what you’re going into, and how you want to tell the story.
The documentary I planned at first was a very different film from the final plans before 2010′s camp. And that was different than the film we shot that week. And that was different than the film I edited.
In a word, plans change. Here’s how the progression looked like for me:
Plan 1: Completely story-driven in a reality-documentary style (with at least 5 cameras)
Plan 1.5: The original plan seemed too big; instead of simplifying, I decided it would be better to shoot a trailer one year and make the actual film the next.
Plan 2: Simplified, cutting out the extravagance but leaving the story-driven focus (2 cameras)
Shooting: After the shoot, I thought the story focus had been lost because of some mistakes I made.
Post: To my delight, a story focus came into view again.
The common thread running through my ideas for the approach consisted of a couple core elements:
Interviews for narration and information
Classes for interaction of campers, and information
Concerts for music
In hindsight, I’m very glad the Lord led me to simplify the plan.
As the start date of 2010′s camp drew nearer (July 26), I began the real prep. Here’s what I had to prep for, and what I did:
Interviews — After making a master list of camp faculty and staff, I then created interview questions for each person. A few questions were standard for everyone, but since each person would be filling different roles in the camp, it was important to have specific questions tailored to each one.
Story Outline — Though I couldn’t write a script or predict what would happen during the week, I could outline the story I wanted to tell based on my experiences with the camp in previous years. In it I included general topics as well as who to interview for each one, and ideas for how to shoot some things. This outline also became a blueprint for the first cut in post.
Shooting Schedule — The camp’s schedule was the biggest unknown factor crucial to the shoot. The camp has three levels of orchestras, two beginner classes, and a harp ensemble; all of these are going on at the same time in the same building, using the same rooms at different times.
Because I had no idea what the schedule would look like for 2010, I could only outline the classes and sessions I knew we would need to shoot. This would enable us to quickly make decisions on what to do once we were on location and had a schedule in-hand.
General Release — To cover the shoot legally, I created a general release sign which announced what we would be doing, and that anyone entering the building would consent for their “voice and/or likeness” to “be captured on still picture or motion media, and/or audio…”
• Crewing
I briefly mentioned above that my original plan called for at least 5 cameras. And a $2500+ budget.
But, through the Lord’s leading me to simplify and follow His direction, the budget disappeared and 5 cameras would have been serious overkill. One of my best friends, Geno DiMaria, graciously accepted my invitation to help on the project. He came up a few days before camp started, so we could go over the plans and prep for the shoot.
We went over the story outline and tentative schedule together, and I tried to prepare him for what would possibly happen during the week.
• Final Prep
After we’d figured out our action plan for hitting the ground at camp (we would be arriving on Sunday, July 25, with just a little bit of time before my brother needed to be in for his orchestra seating audition), we prepped equipment and made sure everything was ready. Unfortunately, I forgot the crucial step of ensuring that Geno’s camera’s settings were exactly the same as the two I would be bringing… Which resulted in the first minute or two from his camera being unusable, because of the stark difference in image.
Here’s what we had for the shoot:
- 3 Panasonic DVX100Bs
- 3 shotgun mics
- 1 lavalier mic
- 2 tripods
- 1 camera shoulder support
- 1 Steadytracker camera support
- 1 Lowel light kit
Before we knew it, July 25 had come, and some time after two o’clock that afternoon, we found ourselves very much in:
Production
The first thing we did after finding a place for our gear, was to look at the schedule. That was a bad call on my part — we could have looked at the schedule anytime, because there wasn’t much to shoot during Sunday afternoon’s auditions. The main thing I wanted to get was Tyler’s audition, and I nearly missed it.
After that less-than-stellar start, the rest of the afternoon went fine. We shot some b-roll, looked at the schedule more, put up release notices, and spent time with friends.
The next day was when the real work began.
• Interviews
After the first day, I realized it was going to be very hard for me to focus on shooting the story while coordinating 19 interviews in two locations. And those 19 didn’t include parents or campers.
I really should have thought about having an interview coordinator beforehand, but thankfully, my dear Mama stepped up and filled the role. It was such a huge help to be able to run around shooting what we needed to shoot, without worrying about the interviews. She would check my shooting schedule, then work around it to set up interview times.
My two biggest regrets about this part of the shooting were: 1) shooting only a handful of parent and camper interviews, and 2) not shooting the first few as well as I should have.
• Schedule, From Geno’s Perspective
Here’s what Geno had to say about the nature of the shooting schedule:
“One aspect of production that I found hard to adjust to was on/off nature of our shooting schedule. While pretty much all film shoots are like that to a degree, often there is still much to be done when filming is not taking place.
But with Sforzando, once we had laid out our plans, labeled tapes, and charged batteries, there were times where we could even go hours in between shooting periods with nothing to do. Then there were occasions where we might have to run from one class to the next just to make it on time, and we would film for several hours at a time. This made it a bit hard to get into a rhythm, but overall was a challenge I feel we were able to overcome. We got everything shot that needed to be, and did it to the best of our abilities. I can’t wait for people to get to see the end result!”
• Lessons Learned
Before shooting Sforzando, I had the opportunity to shoot a video for the Peoria Bach Festival’s performance of J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. It taught me some lessons that were valuable for shooting both classes and concerts at Sforzando. Among them:
Servo zooms are always better while covering an event than manual zooms. I’m not normally a fan of servo zooms, but when relying on one camera angle (which happens even when shooting with 3 angles), manual zooms don’t cut it.
Balance is extremely important for proper tripod shooting. The first night of St. Matthew Passion shooting, I had a mattebox on the front of my main close-up camera. Big mistake. That thing was heavy, and I had to literally hold the tripod handles down the whole hour-and-a-half. That translates to straining muscles, which leads to shaky tripod shots. Which is not cool at all.
Two handles are better than one on a tripod. My preferred method of shooting this way is to place my body against one handle, and control the tripod head by using the other handle. It adds stability, but also leaves one hand free to adjust camera settings on the fly.
Originally I was planning on using only 2 cameras the whole time, but Geno thought it’d be good to use the third camera we had for the final concert… We did so, and I’m extremely glad. Having the third angle to cut to in post helped quite a bit.
Besides not shooting enough parent and camper interviews, I regret not catching more of the interactions between campers themselves. I had plenty of teacher-to-camper interaction, but very little outside of class times. Even though we were pretty busy most of the time, there were plenty of downtime moments I could have utilized, and didn’t.
Post
After taking a week or so off for recovery from production (and to spend time with Geno before he had to go home to South Carolina), I spent a week capturing the 45 tapes we shot. My first priority was to edit the concerts, which I completed in a couple of weeks.
Other responsibilities prevented my starting on the actual documentary editing until December — but when I started, it was my goal to have a rough cut by the end of 2010. To help with assembling the footage (45 tapes worth is quite a bit), I transcribed the interviews into text documents so I could quickly see what people had said without having to scrub through footage.
I used the story outline I had made in pre-production as a blueprint for the rough edit. I didn’t follow it completely — during the editing process I tried to rely on wisdom from the Lord on how to put together the story. There were times when I seriously wasn’t sure where to take it, and He gave me the understanding I needed to continue.
During the week of production, people would ask how long I thought the documentary would be, and I usually gave an estimate of 30 minutes. The rough cut was around an hour, fifteen minutes — because it needed to be.
Once the rough cut was complete, my Mom and brother went through it a couple times with me. We changed the order of segments, cut out a bunch of unnecessary stuff, added some music, tweaked audio, and generally worked on the overall flow. Geno then critiqued it. After I finished going over his notes on the edit, I color corrected and graded the entire timeline.
In Conclusion…
As of now, the completion of the project is literally right around the corner — artwork been designed, credits are done, and the edit’s pretty much locked.
Lord willing, the first DVDs will go on sale during this year’s string camp.
A while ago, I got tired of my cluttered downloads page, and took it down.
It went back up with the new redesign, and today I’m releasing the first download: Fantasia for Two Brothers, the music I composed for the credits of Bros.
Enjoy! =)
A few random notes comparing two DVD duplication companies I’ve used, Kunaki and Createspace:
(Kunaki is an automated CD and DVD manufacturing system. Createspace is an on-demand publishing system owned by Amazon.com.)
Ordering process
Pricing
Benefits & downsides
Print quality
My take:
Kunaki might be cheaper, but the print quality, the user’s having to manage everything, and a lack of Mac-compatible uploading software makes me prefer Createspace.
