Thursday, May 17, 2018

Sharing Family Memories

A special program on how to record and share family memories was held at Fuhrmann Auditorium in Covington Thursday night, a project of the Covington Heritage Foundation, the Council on Aging of St. Tammany and the City of Covington.


Mark Johnson told the audience of the importance of "interviewing" older family members, parents and grandparents, for the purpose of discovering interesting memories that can be recorded and shared with children and grandchildren for years to come.


The event sprang from the experience of Bill Magee who, over several weeks, video recorded nine hours of talks with his mother. It was a great and enjoyable experience for both of them, and a segment of the video tapes was shared with the Thursday night audience.



 

Mrs. Magee tells about FDR

Johnson spoke about the best ways to set up these conversations, with pre-written questions to help guide the interviewee's thoughts and recollections.


A question and answer session followed, with people in the audience sharing their experiences in trying to help their own elders reminiscing about important people and events in their lives. 


  Randy Perkins of Perkins Productions shared his professional tips on the process, encouraging the video taping of the conversation if possible with adequate lighting and proper use of microphones to get the best sound quality. 



Perkins said while it was tempting to use a cellphone to record the interviews, the audio and video files produced are sometimes difficult to retrieve, process and share with others. He recommended instead using a separate audio recorder or video camera with dedicated microphone placed as close as possible to the person speaking. 



Randy and Lynn Perkins on one of their video shoots

From left, David Grouchy, Mark Johnson, Lisa Breland, Bill Magee, Ron Barthet, and Randy Perkins. 


The presentation text was researched and written by Ron Barthet, who has put the information in a PDF booklet which may be downloaded by CLICKING ON THIS LINK.

 
To order a print copy containing the information in the presentation,
CLICK HERE.