A month ago our youngest grandson, Jacob, came up with the idea of making a movie about Zombies. He’s five.
Two weekends ago he got his wish “ at least the part about pulling out a movie camera and shooting interminable scenes of him decked out as a zombie. He got lots of help. Mommy was the make up department. Grandma was the co-star. I was the camera man. Each of us guided the “story” along as best we could. I was trying to suggest a conclusion but Jacob violently objected to my suggestion that after a vigorous display of brain eating we should end the movie with the zombies brushing their teeth. I liked the public service aspect of my suggestion but in a display of willful, creative independence Jacob felt that this would detract from the production’s suspense.
I shot twenty or twenty-five minutes of video in segments from a few seconds long to many minutes of zombies climbing up to my new attic office and down to the basement. Jacob was “in the moment.” It was a long moment.
I managed to capture all of the video on my laptop and planned to weave it all together while we had our ten days away in Florida. But first I had to find some software that would let me cut and paste a movie together. I’ve always thought that would be fun but previous software has completely flummoxed me, a grudging “old dog” whose shoulders slump at the prospect of learning to use new technology. Our television remotes utterly confound me although they are also an inducement to pick up a good book. I found Windows Movie Maker. Of course, being an old dog, I only watched a few minutes of the how-to videos.
I spent ten hours in Florida plunging into the project five times longer than it took to shoot the movie. I thoroughly enjoyed the process once I got the hang of it and kept guffawing at the ridiculous stuff I was churning out. The operative word was “cheap.” The software was free and I hunted online for free sounds and music to set mood. I left a lot of zombie rampage on the cutting room floor.
I shrunk it all into a seven minute movie which I showed to Claudia and her Dad the night before out departure. Then, immediately after finishing the project I somehow deleted the whole thing from my computer. I did not discover this until last night when I proudly brought my laptop over to my daughter’s for a viewing at our traditional Sunday dinner get together. I spent two hours hunting in vain for Zombie Grandson. I was determined to reconstitute the movie and raced back to our house to collect the camcorder with its original footage. Had it not been for my son-in-law, Josh, well, I can’t explain how he solved a problem completely beyond me, but he did. He made it possible for me to proceed with repair and I didn’t even give him credit for his salvage job in the credits.
Through Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes I raced through the repair. I took a break from editing for supper which was interrupted by a fellow canvassing the neighborhood for votes. The canvasser waited patiently at the door as we sat down and then knocked on the door. My daughter got up to take his card and explained that we had just begun our evening meal. When she returned to the table she told us it was some candidate named David Kirby. I jumped out of my chair to catch Dr. Kirby before he got away. but my family yelled at me to come back and eat. It turns out that Dr. Kirby’s wife has been my daughter’s doctor. She’s a nice lady.
I was five minutes away from finishing the editing when Sherlock solved the case but Claudia insisted that our kids needed us to leave so that they could get a good night’s sleep for the new day. I couldn’t be sure whether it would take me five minutes or fifty to wrap up so we left. I was in a sullen mood with the disappointment.
The job is as done now as its going to be with some improvements and with some losses. I think I got what amounts to an OK from my daughter to put it youtube. I’ll do that shortly and put in on my page of mostly political videos. Poor company that.
The project has given me a new tool which I will make use of as the 2015 Duluth School Board campaign heats up. I can now take some old video of school board meetings and snip out sections that will help me illustrate my life as an undead member of the Duluth School Board. I won’t need any spooky music for the spectacle. Brain eating us more than enough to set mood.
