Finished Product
Last summer, I began planning for a big summer film project to work on while visiting family in the states. The plan was to film as many friends and family as possible, either reading a children’s book or singing a children’s song, and to put it all together on a DVD. The purpose of this project was two-fold. I wanted to have more English language video materials for our kids, and I wanted a way to help keep our distant family close in the kids minds.
The idea for this project came to me when I noticed that whenever my son sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star , he started talking about Elmo. In his mind, the two went together because he learned that song from an Elmo video. I thought that it would be great if I could apply that patterning to family members that he does not get to see as often as we would like. What I ended up with was Exeter Readings.
This DVD is a compilation of seven family members and three friends who read books and sang songs for my camera this summer. I shot the whole thing with our digital video camera and did all of the editing with iMovie on our iMac. Initially, I had planned a quick turnaround on this project, and I hoped to complete the whole thing during the summer vacation. Then I decided that we should send the completed project out as Christmas gifts, then New Year’s gifts, and now it seems that they will be belated Valentines presents. I should have slid in some chocolates.
So far the project has been a success on this end. We keep our copy of the DVD in our bedroom, and the kids get bedtime stories from back home each night.
This is the first DVD project that I have put together, and I have to say that seeing the finished product is amazing. We absolutely love it. I can’t wait to get started on a new DVD project, if I can just find the time…