Just wanted to say "Hey" to everyone!

[Matt Austin]

Hey all,

Just thought I'd introduce myself, I'm Matt Austin as you may have guessed from my username (props on the use of "real names", by the way, it's a nice touch). 25 years old, recently finished my MBA...little to no communications/videography experience to speak of.

Inspired by the HBO miniseries 'Band of Brothers', and prompted further when I got in touch with an old University professor via facebook last month, I decided to do a series of interviews with my grandfather to document his service in the Navy during WWII. At 83 years young he's still in good health, but at that age, I do feel that I'd best not tarry.

When thinking about getting ready for the interviews, my initial objective was to simply write down his narrative in standard prose, and make a sort of scrapbook. I then thought to myself, "there's no way I'll be able to write everything down, I'd better get a tape recorder to get his words down right so I can transcribe them later". Then my stream of consciousness went something like this: "if I'm going to do an audio recording, I might as well do a video recording;....need a video camera....if I'm going to do a video recording I'd better do it in HD for the best archival quality possible....hmm, might be a neat idea to do a quazi-documentary film instead....*heads over to adorama and ebay*....gonna need a good camera, Canon Vixia HG10.....if i'm going to have good video, no sense having crappy onboard audio....*orders an audio-technica lav mic*....now that i've got good video and sound, I can't just have him sit there in the dark....*picks up a couple soft-boxes on eBay*...

...and so it begins...

My camera hasn't even arrived yet but I've already been reading as much as possible about this, especially in the documentary section; lots of great stuff there; As I go about putting this all together, I'll be searching, reading, searching some more, occasionally popping in with a question or two, gleaning advice from all the pros on here.

the WWII interviews with grandpa are strictly a family affair, I'm not looking for anything else out of this than a film my family can treasure for years to come. And it's a good thing my aspirations are none too high; I have very little video-editing experience. Last time I rendered a film it was early 2004; I had a video project for my literature class, and my awesome roommate (communications major) took me down to the com department in the basement of the learning commons after hours to the Mac G4's that were running Final Cut Pro 4.0 and helped me do the editing.

Things surely have changed in the five years hence; In fact I may have opened pandora's box, because I'm now worried that my Athlon X2 5000+ desktop w/ 4gb ram and a geforce 8600GT is going to simply sit there gagging when I try to edit the AVCHD from my HG10.

I do have some audiovisual knowledge insofar as I know the difference between a balanced and unbalanced input, line level, clipping, different video sources and standards, that type of thing, from my time as an AV workstudy student; got to set up video projection and sound systems for assemblies, talent shows, that kind of thing, so I'm not a complete technical newbie.

The more I dig into this project, however, the more I realize I have a LOT to learn. I don't anticipate shooting any of the interviews until late November, but I need to get to the point where I feel comfortable enough with my equipment to do this at least semi-right.

Sorry, didn't mean to give y'all my entire life story, but suffice it to say I'm excited to get this family history project off the ground, but I know there's a long road ahead if I want to do it right. Thanks for providing such a great community whose knowledge I'm going to try to soak in as much as possible in the coming weeks and months.

Regards,

-Matt Austin