Nebraska’s Home Movie Day event took place in the Nebraska History Museum’s auditorium, from 1:30pm to 3:30pm. Our plan was that we would solicit reels in advance so we could examine them, add leader, etc., prior to the event; this was pretty much due to the number of people (1) that would be available to examine and prepare film at the event itself. Although we made requests for these submissions, we got only a few, due to lackluster press and short timing.
That turned us to Plan B: Showing clips from our own large collection of home movies. This worked very well, as I could select an appropriate variety to represent time periods, film types, geography, and topic. The bulk of my time was spent selecting and editing a collection of 43 clips into an hour and 20 minute presentation on DVD.
In addition to the screening (if it could be called that!) I gave a 20-minute talk on the “care and feeding” of home movies, including history and significance, what threatens them, what one can do to deal with the threats, and some suggestions on how to determine content. We also mounted a small exhibit on home movie technology in the Museum, using artifacts from the museum’s collections and some from my own stash.
There were 30 people in attendance for the entire program. We served popcorn!