Final Video

This video was challenging because all I had to work with was 1.5 hours of low-quality recorded sound, one photograph of a slide of Leonard's plane projected on a screen, and several contemporary photos of Leonard. The sound was very quiet and Leonard is slow to tell his story because he includes many sub stories and lots of detail along the way. This is part of his charm but is also what makes the challenge. I spent many hours using Audacity to carve short sounds bytes out of his long narrative with somewhat dubious results. In many cases I had to edit out his natural pauses or searching for the right word to condense the sound. I had few pictures to work with and he would take too long to tell us, for example, that the bomb was dropped on  Pearl Harbor. To make up for my lack of pictures and embed it in a larger narrative I tried to use so newsreels. Ideally the story is bracketed by the two bombings--Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima. Perhaps in the hands of an expert this would come through better.

In condensing the narrative I also had to eliminate some of the exciting stories like several close calls where Leonard had to perform emergency landings-- like the time when he had to circle then landing field while he waited for his commander returned from the bar to help. He got impatient and took an axe to the plane to hand crank the landing gear down. There was also the time when he lost an engine while transporting a combat unit. He landed them all safely, white-knuckled and drenched in sweat. He earned their respect and a zippo lighter from that unit's commander. He treasured that lighter though he did not smoke. He also was stationed m any places before the Hump and had to write numerous letters requesting a move. So many stories to tell! Some day more videos need to be made--by someone who is better at it!

Even though I had a really hard time with the videos this semester I can look back and say that I'm glad I learned about DST and how to make videos. Like most things I learn about these days though, I am perennially frustrated by the mismatch between my vision and my  lack of time to fully master the technology and the process.