Road Trip for the Fouth

I'll be heading back to the land of my People... Kentucky.. for the fourth... follow Thomas' and my travels here.... LIVE!!... sort of..

Memorial Day, a little late...

I meant to post this on Memorial Day but as we're fast approaching the D-Day anniversary... this is fitting as well. A few months ago my son Thomas created a movie for a school assignment. He read a book that chronicled the wartime service of a fictional WWII soldier. Thomas then chose to create a video that would both demonstrate things learned from the book and from other sources he sought out after reading it. Now, before I get a lot of comments about how much I did or did not help, let me spell this out... All the creative work, script, titles, was ALL THOMAS. I did act as as technical adviser and when Thomas didn't know how to achieve a certain effect, I would show him how. My hands were on the keyboard and mouse only when we were doing the sound reloops and final sound editing. Let me explain a little further.... Thomas' vision exceeded his bedtime. He had chosen some very cool ideas at the last, including the final dedication of the film. I thought they were important enough to allow him to put it in. I ended up placing and cleaning up the voice over. I also encoded the final movie sequence as doing all this put me past my bedtime. As a good parent, I was sure to make this clear to the teacher as well with the final DVD that went to school. I wanted Thomas to get credit for the work he did which I think speaks for itself. I'm not going to gush on him as if he's a future Spielberg but I think the whole project shows not only did he have a vision but also learned a lot about WWII, and just a little about movie making. In the research phase, Thomas ended up reading several other books on WWII and a few movies that I hand edited for his watching (ie hand-over-eyes) including Saving Private Ryan, Band Of Brothers and the Great Escape and many old news reels. Ok.. the Great Escape was more for me than him! ;)

During the production it was noted by Thomas that he needed his own production company and of course, logo; hence, Future Productions was born. The "parent" company Fort-Knight productions is noted as well and look for yours truly in a cameo as the yelling Airborne Captain.

Enjoy.

Here's the movie.