But that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about the video story assignment. I've been thinking about it a lot and talking to my mum about the video assignment and DS106. My mum is 77 this week and she and my father have lived interesting lives, so I thought I would begin to tell their stories. My mother had just come back from visiting her brother John who lives in Edmonton (he just turned 78 and is a dynamo!) and they had been talking about the war, doodlebugs and other shared memories from their childhood. "What's a doodlebug?" I asked. And so the story unfolded. War through the eyes of a four year old. Mum was only four but still remembers hiding in a closet during the early days of the Blitz. When she returned to Southampton in 1945 or so, housing was a tremedous problem as so many homes had been destroyed. Mum remembers playing in abandoned bombed building and walking the roof rafters!
During the week I looked stuff up for my mum online so she could see Southampton during the blitz and some movies of Southampton. We found the road she lived on before she had to move away because a bomb had landed in a yard just down the street and Grandma decided Southampton was too dangerous. She was sent to live with other people for the remainder of the war. Mum and I looked at photos of the Bargate in the photos and videos. It survived because the Germans used it as an aerial marker to let them know when to drop the bombs. I hadn't been to Southampton since I was 11 so while I do remember walking on the Norman walls and visiting the archaeologist who was excavating the Roman ruins found under the Victorian homes they had torn down and seeing churches that had not yet been rebuilt since the war, I didn't remember that landmark.
What went right with this assignment? My mum agreeing to do it. She is a very private person so this was a gift. My mum interviews very well, though at some points you can hear a lot of background noise as she was rubbing her splint. I think it would have been much better if I was using a video camera for both sound and image. My voice does not come out particularly clearly as I was sitting too far away from the mike. Perhaps the next time mum and I sit down I might have improved in my planning for recording and editing. Another frustration was images. While there are a lot of images online of the Southampton Blitz, someone has taken the old photos, scanned them and then put an all rights reserved sticker on them. So I made the decision, reluctantly, not to include any still images. I found some various videos on the web to start the video, including the historical and military rational for the bombing of Southampton.
I used Movie Maker to put the clips together, but ran into trouble when I tried to publish it as the program said YouTube didn't like long movies. I sent a message out to through Twitter and of course my PLN sent me answers back! So very reliable!
November ended up being a lost month in terms of blogging but not in terms of spending some good quality time with my mum. You can see why she's always been one of my role models!
