The Never Ending Video
March 2008
My Own Treasured Friends,
I have the touch. No, I didn’t say I was "touched," as in touched in the head, an older medical expression meaning loony. I mean I have a gift for creating. Lacking even one lesson on film making or direction, I jumped in to shoot a video to promote my historical romance Goodbye Lie series. I now believe I’m a natural! I can push the video camera on/off button and boss people around with the best of them. Call me Jane Marie Scorsese-Spielberg.
It all started when Nancy, my sister and partner in GraciousJaneMarie.com and all that entails, told me we needed a Goodbye Lie video, post-haste, one that would call attention to the book and our site on you tube. Naturally, I corralled Caryn, of AskCaryn.com, who was visiting Florida from Oklahoma with her friend, Jordan, as well as my husband, Bruce. Bruce is usually a good sport about such projects. Good thing, since he was to be the star of the show.
It took me several days to finalize the concept of how I wanted to lay out the video. I knew I wanted it to be on the beach, include The Goodbye Lie cover, tell / show highlights of the story, and promote Nancy’s handmade jewelry and my hand painted Secret Pebbles™. I planned on music, animation, props, action, and acting, all that makes an award winning piece. Naturally, such a work had to have a script, so I wrote one to include stage directions and 33 different shots. I put down such detail, it took both sides of one sheet of paper to complete!
Since I don’t edit video, not because it’s against my artistic sense of “write” and wrong, but because I don’t know how to work the software, I thought I had to get every shot perfect or close enough to what I consider sort of perfect. After much thought, I realized I could rewind a scene, repeatedly re-shoot it to my relative satisfaction, and continue.
I asked the teenaged girls, who always carry crayons when they travel (fortuitous and curious) to create a few colorful drawings to represent different elements of the story such as adventure, comedy, love, family bonds.
I searched for a recognizable tune that would go along with my Goodbye Lie concept and made sure there was no copyright left on it. I changed the words and assigned Bruce, who has perfect pitch ( just ask him) to sing it acappella.
We gathered and / or made the dozen or so props required, then rehearsed in the cool of the house, each player following his or her script while I explained the action. Jordan was the time keeper, clocking most scenes at about 3 to 5 seconds to give us an idea of the length of the piece. We figured about three minutes max for the entire video.
The outdoor light had to be just right. High noon would wash everything out. I would be crazy to expect the family to perform in the early morning just after sunrise when the light was perfect. Likewise, a couple of hours before sunset would have worked, however, I wasn’t sure how long the filming process would take and didn’t want to run into darkness.
So there we were, in the 90°+ heat of the Florida 4 p.m. sun, our hands packed with all that is necessary to shoot a mini-movie, our faces slathered with sunscreen. All except Bruce, that is. I forgot to do him. He’s such a little boy sometimes, he rarely bothers of his own volition, tisk, tisk.
One thing I’ve learned while taking photos of Martha Bear™ on the beach is passers by want to watch and a few do, but most feel they’re too cool to stop to see what’s going on, so only slow their pace. Too bad for them. They could have been extras in our epic. (In the final movie, except for one pair of flip-flops passing in the background, Bruce looks to be on a deserted beach, which is what this director was going for in the first place.)
I found myself calling out, “Oh, script girl,” that would be Caryn, to feed a line when needed or point out the next scene. Jordan was sound effects. You’ll know when you hear the animal sound, in particular. Speaking of hearing, I overheard Bruce tell the script girl, “Jane Marie will never be able to hear a word I’m saying over the sound of the waves.”
Is that right, oh ye of little acting ability?
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending upon how many stars you give our creation, whose working title was Island Romance, we have complete and clear sound on the video tape.
Our little mini-movie was completed with one take per scene, except for the last scene. However, after viewing the film, I discovered I had recorded when I thought the camera was on pause! Thank goodness it only happened one time and at the very end. We fixed that, sort of, with a re-shoot.
We had a few other bloopers, like a shot of a cardboard box, the deliberate mispronunciation of the name of a certain famous magazine because someone thought it would be funny (Nancy hates that kind of humor), hysterical laughter while delivering some of the lines, me overheard saying “go” instead of action (actually, “go” kind of fits in the video if you’re confused at the story line and don’t know what you’re looking at and why), Bruce saying janemarie.com instead of GraciousJaneMarie.com, and the video lasting six minutes instead of three.
If one person buys my novel because their curiosity was sparked by our nutzoid footage, then we’ve come in under budget. You see, since I already had the video recorder for pictures of Ava, our grandbaby, and the girls brought their own crayons, the project was completely free. Of course, I’m not counting Bruce’s trip to the emergency room for his third degree sunburn and heat stroke. I believe that would come under the category of our personal insurance, which has nothing to do with our business. Now this is how you run a company. Right, Nance?
Click here to see the The Goodbye Lie tribute video. Enjoy!
Love
from Florida's Amelia Island,
Jane Marie
PS Our video, Prose Before Swine, still requires editing to fit youtube standards and when we figure out how to do this, we will upload it.
PPS Being a Windie, a Gone With The Wind, enthusiast, I , like David O. Selznick, the producer, want the world to have knowledge of my original script / stage directions, typos and all. After you watch the Goodbye Lie tribute video, come back here and compare. You’ll be amazed, or should I say dazed?
Original Goodbye Lie script
All with the sound of waves in the background and all shot on the beach but the sunset on the west side of Amelia Island.
Forbes quote
zoom in of Martha Bear™ holding The Goodbye Lie book on the beach
sign: By Jane Marie Malcolm
sign: Once upon a beach
shot of waves - shout "Murder! comedy! aventure, romance, surprise ending! The gbl is well tatted with all this and much, much more!"
"Chapter 1" - a plastic / paper horse on the beach, tornado drawing, scream
Breelan in costume/dress having her ankle measured - modern talk? giggle
a paper boat burning on the sand and the tide washing it away, a scream,
girls finding a shark's tooth - modern talk? wahoo!
"Cheese is too made from buffalo tongues," Nora and Bree from back find a white balloon on the beach with a face, a scream
thumbing thru a book, "Look Mama. People from NY look just like we do."
a girl looking in a hand mirror, scream
man and woman holding hands walking away down the beach or her glove / his watch, a ring
sunset
book cover on the beach
sign: The Goodbye Lie series by Jane Marie Malcolm
sign: available at Amazon.com: The Goodbye Lie
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