So last Christmas I got a nifty HD video camera ~ I had planned on going immediately to work producing and creating a catalog of scintillating and fascinating videos for both work and self expression.
So, it’s now late October and here we are! *One video*.
I guess it took quite some to come up with an idea for a clip to break the creative ice – then once I hatched my plan of a series of stories about New England the actual writing of copy, going around and shooting, and doing endless stand-ups took some time.
*Then* I ran into a bit of a wall trying to work out editing on my iMovie and *then* it took a while to figure out how to upload reasonably clear video to YouTube, Vimeo ect.
There’s been a lot of trial and error that’s gone into this particular video – but I’m so happy to actually have something to upload that doesn’t look like it is being broadcast from the moon that I am overlooking the obvious bad hair day, issues with camera work, and not matching up video to narration. These can be worked out in subsequent projects.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
nice job on this. it looks like a really cool placce. would love to see some shots of it in its hey day.
I grew up in the 1960’s and 1970’s about a mile away from Johnsonville. The story is mostly accurate. Until a massive fire in 1972 or 1973, the property had a cotton twine mill that was using mechanical equipement to make twine. Wedding during the summer in the Gilead Chapel were common, as was a wonderful Christmas display every year, including a Christmas eve service in the Chapel. Volunteers would reenact 19th century living in the school house and the mercantile store, and a matched set of Belgian draft horses would pull a sleigh full of visitors. The steam boat mentioned in the story, the Royal Canadian, was brought to the pond, but Mr. Schmitt never really did anything with it. It slowly fell into disrepair. The original Johnson mansion, the Twine Mill office building (next to the site of the Twine mill) and a few out buildings were original, with most of the other buildings, including the large yellow barn, were brought in from around New England. Sad to see it in such disrepair.
hey Jack – thanks so much for sharing this info! It was a bit of a project coming up with details about the place – it sounds like it was amazing!