Using Technology to Tell Stories

As I create video for our collaborative project, I intend to share here, too. This is my Letter M Movie:

Here is my script:

M is for Music. I can’t ever remember a time when there wasn’t music in my life. My father was an accountant by day and drummer by night – working with dance bands on the weekends and teaching students in the weekday afternoons — and whenever he was home, the stereo was almost certainly on and the volume, up. The sounds of Weather Report, the Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan and Art Blakey form the soundtrack of my childhood. I never took to the drums like my dad. I never had the dexterity. Instead, I gravitated to the saxophone, and except for an unexplained 10-year gap where my sax cases remained in a closet, I have been playing my instrument for the past 30 years. Yet my interests in music go far beyond the horn. I have composed music for our church and heard my notes sung by an entire choir and booming pipe organ. I have written more than 200 songs on my acoustic guitar, some of which never leave my guitar case but others which take on a life of their own in the hands of the rock band I might be in at that particular time. Through music, I have explored myself. Through song, I have entered the inner terrain of me and I have come out the other end with something unexplainable but powerful – music. There is an intangible quality to what the colors of music mean to me. I can sense what it is, yet I can’t quite explain it. The songs will have to speak for themselves. M is for Music.

Here is my reflection:

My dad has always been a strong influence on me so using the letter M to represent music seemed like a no-brainer. But what did I want to say? I wanted to move beyond just recognizing his impact on me and move more into what music means to me. The script came easy enough. The most difficult thing was trying to find the pictures that I knew I wanted to use early in the piece, with my dad on the drums on the background and me in the foreground. They were pre-digital camera, so after I found them, I thought about how to get them into my computer. I ended up just taking a picture of a picture — not the best method but the quickest one I had on hand. Once I had the photos in place, the rest came together easily enough.

Peace,
Kevin