The Grandpa Tapes – A Tribute to Charles Schwartz (1908-1993)

About The Grandpa Tapes

Working for clients is fun and typically pays very well but some projects provide a level of satisfaction that exceed the wildest of incomes. In this case, I’m talking about a tribute DVD I cobbled together for relatives as part of a Christmas Holiday present.

Analog Tape Way Back When

In 1992, I borrowed a VHS camera from my girlfriend’s brother and filmed my grandfather. That girl is now my wife and her brother Don is my brother-in-law.

Almost 17 years later, I rediscovered my VHS recording, digitized it, then while the parents were away on vacation, I went through their house and collected all the photos of my grandfather, Charles Schwartz – my mom’s father.

I scanned in old pictures from the 1930s, wedding pictures from 1961, and even found my very first photos in old scrapbooks from 1970.

With pictures and video in hand, I then created a Vegas project and started assembling the story. This was not a video project that was going to have lots of cuts and fancy effects as the goal was really to capture the feel of the man and what it was like to visit my grandfather on a Sunday afternoon.

Enter Charles Schwartz – 84 Years of Wisdom

At the time I filmed Charles at his home at 518 Mile Square Road in Yonkers, New York, he was 84 years old.

In the resulting hour long DVD we covered all the big topics – from sex, first dates, jobs, goals, dreams, education, global warming, crime, immigration, discrimination, World War 2, guns, capital punishment, prostitution, gangs, and many chapters about various relatives (e.g., my sister, my parents).

I was frustrated at first with the production quality of the video as the VHS is not what I’m now used to with my triple-chip high-end digital cameras.

It was also the first time I really filmed a documentary (without knowing that was what I was doing) and made the mistake of shooting into the setting sun streaming through the window behind my grandfather. Yet on some creative level, this “technique” actually worked (“happy accident”) and there are parts in the tape that are very clear but I digress.

Producing the DVD as Gift to Relatives

Lastly I should mention the DVD Architect part of the project. This allowed me to create a series of menus for the DVD with 62 chapter points. This way, if a relative wants to jump to that section of the footage that pertains to them, they can scroll through the menus and quickly jump to that chapter. This was a lot of work to set up (the chapters) but I think in the end will make it all the more valuable to relatives – especially, down the road.

Funny how the Universe works in that right after I completed this tribute video, I got a couple more client gigs to do similar for their families – what fun!