Emotion and Family History

The latest in a series of bite-sized family history videos are in progress. As I wrote recently, we're using old photos and headlines as visual cues in a slide show while my husband or another family member narrates the story for a brief video. 

The stories are family history for the younger generation, but we, the narrators, actually lived through these experiences. Then and now, the experiences evoked emotions that we want to share.

The first story my Sis and I are going to video is about going to dancing school and performing in recitals. The story was inspired by one of our favorite family photos--this adorable little dancing tomato girl.

Narrating the video combines facts and memories, sometimes with a bit of research to support (or disprove) parts of the story. I was able to research the location of the dancing school, among other facts. I also remembered how my parents complained about the extra cost for costumes, at a time when the household budget was increasingly stretched.

Adding emotion to family history

Emotion plays a role in our choice of topics for these videos, and in our enthusiasm for telling the stories we want future generations to hear. Enhanced by our positive or negative feelings, if the overall story can touch the heart in some way, it will be remembered. 

If we merely recited names, dates, places, and relationships as old photos appear on the screen, our audience members would probably not respond as strongly. Not every story will be "fun" but we hope that the next generation will remember at least one or two points from each video.

Family history foundation beyond emotion

There has to be a solid family history foundation to any story, beyond nostalgia or reminiscences. For instance, the "history" part of the dancing school story is that it was a tradition in my mother's family to send children for lessons, often music or dance (or both). 

Our first cousins all took lessons of some sort, I know from family tree letters and documents (and from personal memories of the past). The athletic cousins took up sports. Some cousins had piano teachers come to the house or went to photography camp, etc. 

Other "history" elements in the dancing school story: how our parents managed to pay for these lessons...and their pride in our performances and sharing our (fairly slow) progress with the wider family. 

We didn't grow up to be dancers or musicians, but our parents gave us an opportunity to widen our horizons. And we have photos that remind us of that history and of how we felt about it, photos that help tell a family history story for future generations.

Experiment: Bite-Sized Family History Video

 

This week, my hubby and I experimented with videoing a bite-sized family history story from his childhood. Every Sunday, his Dad would take the kids (pre-school age) to church while Mom stayed home and cooked a big dinner. 

After church, it was still too early to bring the kids home. Mom needed another 30 or 60 minutes to finish cooking and set the table. So Dad took the kids to a nearby railroad yard, where they all watched trains being made up. When they returned home, Sunday dinner was on the table. 

Here's the three-step process we followed to get from "story" to "bite-sized video."

Step 1: Find visuals

Visuals are, of course, a big part of any video. We had a couple of good photos of the kids at the rail yard and in the car.

To add more to the story, I found (via Pixabay.com) free, somewhat generic photos of a railroad yard and a church. These would be good enough to convey the sense of childhood Sundays.

Step 2: Create a slide show

Next, I created a slide show (I use PowerPoint) with a simple colored background, making the photos the center of attention. 

I added headlines at the top of each slide, partly to guide the narration and partly for viewers to read. I used present tense for these headlines, to make the story feel "in the moment" rather than "in the past." Example: "After church, Dad drives to..."

Not visible in this illustration are the names superimposed on one of the photos, to clearly caption who's who even though one of the children is narrating the story. Also, I included an approximate date on one of the slides.

Step 3: Record the videoconference

Once my husband was happy with the four slides and had thought about what he would say as a voice-over, we began a videoconference (in this case, Zoom). He shared his screen with the slide show, and then I began the recording. He narrated the four slides in about eight minutes. I stopped recording, waited for it to be converted to mp4 video, and then we played the video. 

Our first try was pretty good. We did a second take, and that one was better, with my husband adding a few specific details he had not mentioned the first time. 

More ideas to try

Because the video was short, we were able to email it to recipients. (A longer video, too large for email, would have to be sent a different way.) Although we're still waiting for reaction, hubby and I enjoyed the process so much that we're already thinking about our next bite-sized video of family history.

Next time, we'll figure out how to have the narrator (my husband) visible on screen as he tells the story and advances the slides. Or we might include a recent photo of him next to a photo of him at the time of the family-history story he's telling.

Another plan is to have a sibling reminisce with him, via videoconference, with slides on the screen. The headlines could be a starting point for discussion as the photos stimulate memories from the past.

Also, I need to add my husband's name and the date of recording to one of these slides, so future viewers know who is narrating and when.

Have you tried videoing a family history story? How did it work? What did your family think?

--Post is part of the August Genealogy Blog Party  https://www.thefamilyheart.com/