No and yes - when we were married forty-five years ago a mutual-friend gave wife and me a twenty-minute "portrait" of our wedding edited from 8mm film he had taken of the big event - scenes of wife getting ready, the ceremony and reception, and most important all the guests arriving at the church - shots of uncles and aunts and co-workers long gone - one of the most thoughtful and valuable gifts I've ever received.....
Anyhow, inspired by that film I bought an 8mm camera when our daughter was born, and a few years later a Super8 sound camera - later came the videotape rig with the separate recorder that had to be lugged around and eventually an all-in-one camcorder - all the while I was merrily shooting everything that caught my fancy (a bit limited at first by the high cost of 8mm film stock and processing).....
After my mother died I was finally inspired to do something with all this material and set out to do a family memorial - I sent all the 8mm footage to a company which cleaned it up and transferred it to digital video tape, and then loaded those tapes and relevant VHS stuff into the computer using the electronics of a digital camcorder - I got to work learning MovieMaker and eventually edited out about an hour and a-half, two DVD, "project" with material primarily from my side of the family - edited portions of the wedding, the picnic with in-laws in our backyard the day before my father-in-law died, sister's fiftieth birthday, mother's eightieth birthday and on and on - I added some captions including the announcement that it was a "Getahanky Production" and some schmaltzy background music
(Romance - The Gadfly) for the first sections without a soundtrack - sent copies out to my sisters and a couple of nieces who were prominent in some of the scenes - it took some time, but well worth it - one sister reported that she did in fact need a hanky while watching it.....
Now I'm faced with finishing a similar film for my wife's side of the family - because we live in the same town as her family, I've got about three times as much footage to go through for them as for my own side - and I need to consult with her lots and lots to see what she wants to include and what she wants to forget about - slow going, but it'll get done - probably.....
So, no and yes......
