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b'Genealogy Gems Podcast Episode 223 November 2018 with Lisa Louise Cooke \\xa0 Bit Players in Someone Else\\u2019s Show If you happen to catch an old episode of the TV Series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you may be surprised to spot Ben Affleck dribbling down a basketball court in the not so highly acclaimed role of Basketball Player #10. \\xa0 \\xa0 Or how about funny man Jack Black of School of Rock fame in the walk-on part of \\u201cTaxi Driver\\u201d on the iconic 1980s comedy The Golden Girls. \\xa0 Yep, at some point we are ALL bit players in somebody else\\u2019s show.\\xa0And that is even more true with old home movies. \\xa0 Your friends, your neighbors and even perfect strangers have likely at some point captured you or someone in your family in one of their own old home movies. And the same is true for your ancestors. As long as film has been around, the chances of someone in your family tree appearing in someone else\\u2019s videos at some point in time is actually quite high. \\xa0 And think about it, when film \\u2013 or moving pictures - came into being right around 1895, it had the capability of capturing someone born as early as even 1800. That\\u2019s a lot of potential generations of your family! \\xa0 David Haas MD knows this better than most folks. he has experienced first-hand that any one of us may find ourselves, quite by surprise, as the keeper or even the Archivist of film footage that connects to potentially hundreds if not thousands of other people and families. And there\\u2019s a very good possibility that yours is one of those families. \\xa0 Your family could very well indeed be one that has been a bit player in somebody else\\u2019s film, and you didn\\u2019t even know it. But that\\u2019s OK, because thanks to technology, it\\u2019s never been easier to find the celluloid that once lay sleeping in a stranger\\u2019s attic.\\xa0 \\xa0 A Listener\'s Lead The best place to start our story is how I came to know David Haas. \\xa0 I\\u2019ve been encouraging you my listeners through this podcast, my book , and my in-person lectures to turn to online video, and specifically YouTube in search of your family. Long time listener Debby Warner Anderson contacted me to let me know that she had followed my suggestion with dramatic results. She wrote: \\xa0 \\u201cI had interviewed my Dad to get details of his memories and found the 2 YouTube links about the 1945 Macy\'s Parade that my father went to and the video about W.C. Handy who my Dad remembered seeing.\\xa0My Dad was so tickled to see the YouTube videos to go with his memories. It gave my family members and my son a real glimpse in to my Dad\'s memories.\\xa0 Thank-you for the suggestions!\\u201d \\xa0 I clicked the link she shared to an article that she wrote on her blog called Debby\\u2019s Family Genealogy. The article called described the find in detail and included the video, called Macy\'s Thanksgiving Day Parade \\u2013 1945. David Haas MD had uploaded this video to YouTube, and it\\u2019s one of hundreds on his YouTube channel under his name David Haas MD. You need only click it and watch just a few moments to be mesmerized. The video, comprised of old home movies, is striking in it\\u2019s color quality, and you instantly feel yourself falling back in time, pulled there even further by the haunting music that serves as the backdrop to this silent film. \\xa0 Macy\'s parade: I was so taken by how this video, sitting out there for free on YouTube, fit so beautifully into her family history, helping to bring it just a bit more into focus. \\xa0 I sat and watched the Macy\\u2019s Day parade video all the way through. It was so clear that it was carefully and thoughtfully restored and shared, and that it must have come from someone else\\u2019s personal home movie collection. \\xa0 Clicking on the name of the person who uploaded any video on YouTube will bring you to their YouTube channel. Anyone can have a free YouTube channel by simply signing in with a free Google account and uploading a video. It\\u2019s called Creators Studio, and these days it sports an impressive collection of tools that anyone can use to create, enhance and share videos. \\xa0 Many channels will have only one or maybe a handful of videos. This is not the case with David\\u2019s channel. It\\u2019s difficult to scroll down the page far enough to get to the end of the impressive video list. Where did all these home movies come from? What motivated him to invest the time to make the available on YouTube? \\xa0 Thank you to our sponsor: Literally hundreds of people appear in the 4 \\xbd minute Macy\'s Parade (1945) film: the folks in the parade, the people lining the streets and even the people watching from the fire escapes of the surrounding buildings. \\xa0 The film was created by William G Whitman Sr. A veteran of World War I, he made his way after the war as a bit of a jack of all trades, and the path eventually got the ball rolling that led to the home movies. \\xa0 William G Whitman, Sr. was David\\u2019s grandfather on his mother\\u2019s side. William, his wife Catherine,\\xa0 and their 10 year old daughter Catherine who is David\\u2019s mother can be found in the 1930 census\\xa0 living in Brooklyn. At that time William says he\\u2019s a manager of a store. By 1940 he has followed his passion and is proudly declaring he works in Photographic retail as a photo finisher. \\xa0 \\xa0(Whitman family in the 1940 US Federal Census, Brooklyn, NY) But it was as far back as the year that the Great Depression hit, 1929 that William began capturing his growing family on film. In those early movies David\\u2019s mother, Catherine, was just 9 years old. David\\u2019s collection of films span from this time period all the way through the mid-1970s. \\xa0 In the earliest of the home movies which you can see on , William Whitman did what most of us do, take home movies of the people and things we love the most. In those films, David\\u2019s mom clearly relishes being in front of her father\\u2019s camera. She worshiped her father, who was a bit of a big kid himself. \\xa0 David says: \\u201cMy mother always remembered things in a sunny way\\u2026it\\u2019s very much like the pictures we see on the internet, where people tend to post the most rosy possible pictures.\\xa0 Often times, I think it\\u2019s the same with the home movies. You really have to dig deeper to kind of get the whole story.\\u201d \\xa0 This phenomenon of capturing and sharing the rosiest version of ourselves is nothing new. And as genealogists, we are in the perfect position to leverage old movies like these and dig deeper for the rest of the story. Story is a running theme through William Whitman\\u2019s films. You only need to watch a few to see what a keen eye for composition and telling stories that he had. He developed his skill while shooting weddings professionally. \\xa0 William got his whole family into the act of shooting, developing and editing his films. After his daughter Catherine married David\\u2019s father, he too joined in. William passed his skills and knowledge onto his son-in-law. He soon started shooting film of his own further adding to the collection of home movies. \\xa0 As with so many genealogical tales, great treasure troves like these films are often found with three part deep digging and one part luck. In David\\u2019s case, the path to the treasure starts with the family\\u2019s refrigerator. His father used to project the movies onto the white kitchen refrigerator. Many years later, after his parents passed away, he found his father\\u2019s movies. But it wasn\\u2019t until his Aunt Markie mentioned that there were much older 16mm movies in existence dating back to the 1920s that the rest of the collection was discovered in the basement. David set to work getting them digitized. \\xa0 David not only discovered that these movies were a priceless find for his own family, he soon realized that they held a vast amount of treasure for many other families in a wide variety of locations. \\u201cIt really was about the people\\u2026they needed to be shared!\\u201d He felt a moral obligation to do so, and it soon turned into an obsession. \\xa0 The Gold Waiting to be Found And that\\u2019s the gold here! If we are all bit players in everybody else\\u2019s show, and this show was happening in so many different locations, then there are a lot of bit players out there waiting to be found by their families too, right there in David\\u2019s films. While the films of course covered Brooklyn where David\\u2019s family lived, they branch out to Queens NY, Ventner NJ, and as far away as San Francisco. \\xa0 The genealogical value of old home movies is immense. If as researchers we can occasionally shift our focus from ancestors\' names to locations, we could very possibly hit pay dirt and find old films online that include our family.\\xa0 \\xa0 It was in the town of Suffern, NY that David\\u2019s father shot quite a bit of footage, but there\\u2019s plenty to be had in many different locations. Once he posted them on YouTube the response was swift. \\xa0 . \\xa0 (This compilation of footage was created to commemorate the 40th Reunion of the Suffern High School Class of 1975. It is 41 minutes in length and premiered on October 3, 2015 at the historic Lafayette Theatre in downtown Suffern, NY.) \\xa0 The color video on David\\u2019s YouTube channel garnered dozens of comments from grateful viewers. \\xa0 His father filmed elements of the game that the news didn\\u2019t which viewers appreciated. And some had been at that very game. \\xa0 \\xa0 We\\u2019re Not Getting Any Younger David stresses that timeliness is really important when it comes to sharing old home movies like these. \\u201cPeople aren\\u2019t getting any younger\\u201d he says, and \\u201cOthers may have insights you may miss.\\u201d One connection made through sharing the movies on YouTube, that just barely missed making a personal connection, revolved around David\\u2019s mother\\u2019s younger sister, his aunt Margaret Whitman. She lived in\\xa0 Brooklyn in the 1930-1940s, and there are movies of \\u201cMarkie\\u201d with her friends. One film from the 1930s included her good friend Charlie Russell. A few years ago, David received a message from a Charlie after he saw one of the videos! Sadly, he made the connection literally a week after Markie passed away at the age of 89. \\u201cIf I could have made this connection 6 months earlier it would have been so wonderful for both of them. By then all their other friends had passed away.\\u201d \\xa0 \\xa0 Another viewer who was touched by the films was a woman who saw herself walking around the Suffern swimming pool with her mother. It was priceless to her since her parents later died in an airplane crash and she had few photos of them. \\xa0 David tells another story of connection: \\u201cThere was a little league game that my father filmed in Suffern, and there was a young boy who struck out, and as he was walking off and one of the coaches kind of patted him on the butt, sort of saying \\u201cgood try, good job\\u201d, and then the game was over and they were all kind of hugging each other because they won the game. And this young boy ended up seeing the film now, I guess 50 years later. His father had passed away not long after that little league game, and here he was seeing his father who was his coach, encouraging him after he struck out. And again, he said he couldn\\u2019t speak for hours. It was just amazing.\\u201d \\xa0 Another woman even found her parents in one of the videos on Coney Island where they ran a pony ride with her grandfather! \\xa0 David\\u2019s willingness to share his family\\u2019s treasure trove of home movies put him in a unique and unexpected position to touch many people\\u2019s lives in truly meaningful ways. The only difference between him and many others who have even just a few spools of film is that he took action to share them.\\xa0Along the way, he learned some important lessons about what makes film so distinct in its value, and it\\u2019s those unique characteristic that told him more about his own family. He says,\\xa0\\u201cWhat I\\u2019ve learned is that photographs are powerful, but there\\u2019s nothing like moving images\\u201d.\\xa0 \\xa0 David\\u2019s father had captured the moments of other people\\u2019s lives while filming his own. David didn\\u2019t use to be interested in genealogy. His father, however, was obsessed with it. But now, David finds that he is grateful to be able to pull the genealogy back out and reconstruct who the people are in the movies. \\xa0 It\\u2019s a word so often associated with genealogy \\u2013 obsessed. David\\u2019s father became obsessed with it and now David has become obsessed with processing and making available his cache of his father\\u2019s and grandfather\\u2019s home movies. This has in turn gloriously ensnared him in the world of genealogy. \\xa0 David hopes by sharing his story of how these videos have impacted and continue to impact the lives of strangers from around the world, it will inspire all of us who have a few reels of old family movies to make it a priority to get them digitized and make them available. Our families and other unknown families are counting on us. \\xa0 \\u201cOne thing that I\\u2019m really passionate about is that people who have home movies, if they can, they should really do their best to get them digitized\\u201d He continues, \\u201cHaving gone through the experience, and it\\u2019s really been transformative, I feel very passionate about getting my wife\\u2019s movies, her family\\u2019s movies or her father when he was arrived, getting these converted and sharing these with my wife\\u2019s family. So that they can really forever see these movies and share them with their children, so that they can be passed down for generations.\\u201d\\xa0 Thank you to our sponsor: \\xa0is the place to make connections with relatives overseas, particularly with those who may still live in your ancestral homeland.\\xa0: it\\u2019s free to get started. \\xa0 The process: Digitize, Enhance and Share We\\u2019ve all seen the commercial where they peer into the camera and aske \\u201cwhat\\u2019s in your wallet\\u201d. Our question today is \\u201cwhat\\u2019s in your closet\\u201d. I\\u2019ve looked through my closets and I have several home movies my grandmother shot on 8mm film. I also have a box full of VHS tapes from back when Bill and I got our first video camera right after we got married in the 1980s. \\xa0 The process for digitizing and sharing your home movies can appear daunting at first glance. That\\u2019s why I asked David Haas MD to share some specifics about his project so that you can learn what you need to consider and some tips from somebody who\\u2019s already been through this in a big way. \\xa0 Although David\\u2019s collection of film runs about 10 hours, has several hundred videos because he kept them short \\u2013 about 4 minutes long each. This is a smart strategy because of the attention span of YouTube viewers. It\\u2019s also about the length of a song, which makes setting them to music easier. \\xa0 David went the extra mile and created a website where he makes available indexes of all the videos which can be searched by location, year and person. David really thought about the potential value of these films and set up a system for making it easier for visitors to find what they are looking for. In a case like his where he has such a volume of these 3-5 minute videos, this is a huge help to other researchers. But don\\u2019t worry if having your own website isn\\u2019t in your wheelhouse. YouTube has a powerful search engine, and it\\u2019s called Google. You can make your videos very easily searchable by simply include the details that pertain to a particular video in the video description that appears below the video on YouTube. \\xa0 Since your videos will be on your YouTube channel, researchers be able to simply go to your channel\\u2019s home page and type a name, place event or some other set of keywords in your channel\\u2019s search box. Google will search just your channel and retrieve only the videos that match the search terms.\\xa0If you want to see this in action, go to my YouTube channel at \\xa0 or and try a search.\\xa0 \\xa0 Digitizing Your Home Movies The first step is to get the movies digitized. It can be a pretty scary thought to send your precious movies off to some stranger. David considers his videos his \\u201cmost priceless possession.\\u201d Through a bit of trial and error, David landed with a company who could do the job. He first tried a local place but ultimately went with Video Conversion Experts in Chandler AZ. They did an excellent job and cleaned them up and optimized the film. He recommends overnighting your films so that you can control when they arrive. You can receive both hard drives and DVDs of the digitized movies. \\xa0 Sharing Your Home Movies on YouTube At first, David thought he would take the movies to the local library. His daughter Anna convinced him to try editing them with iMovie and then uploading them to YouTube. The first film he edited was called .\\xa0\\xa0 Free video editing tools: (Mac) iMovie - (PC) Movie Maker - \\xa0 Thank goodness for David\\u2019s daughter Anna Haas! Just think if these videos had only landed in one physical location like a library versus online. Now another generation of the Haas family has entered the picture to preserve the family\\u2019s legacy and touch the lives of so many others. And it\\u2019s Anna\\u2019s inspiring music that provides the backdrop for the Macy\\u2019s Day Parade and several others. on her album \\u201cCrazy Is\\u201d \\xa0 Visit Anna Haas\\u2019 website: Anna\\u2019s YouTube channel: Anna Haas - "Find Your Home" - Official Music Video: \\xa0 When you love people, you just can\\u2019t justify keeping old home movies to yourself. You can\\u2019t in good conscience leave them in dusty boxes stuffed away in the back of closets in risk of deteriorating to dust. For the woman who saw her parents again in the swimming pool video, to the man who felt the affection from a father long gone, and for countless unnamed others the action that David has taken to digitize, preserve and share his home movies has been valuable beyond words. \\xa0 \\u201cDon\\u2019t be afraid to do it, don\\u2019t hesitate to do it. even if you don\\u2019t have the skill set to do it, there are other people who are more than happy to kind of walk you through it and help make it happen. I would be extremely encouraging of everyone to convert their old movies and share them as widely as possible.\\u201d \\xa0 Resources on the topic of video at the Genealogy Gems website \\xa0 Browse his phenomenal collection of home movies at You\\u2019ll find inspiration and you might just find an ancestor captured on film. Because we are all bit players in everybody else\\u2019s show.'