Family Vacation or Acting Boot Camp?

Earlier this month, the greater Gaub family met for their yearly mini-reunion slash vacation for a week. We usually try a new place within driving distance each year, but we all liked a place called the Leland Lake House we stayed at two years ago, that we broke with tradition and stayed in the same place twice. It’s possible we’ll stay there again in the future.

Finding things to do at the Leland Lake House isn’t too difficult, but it IS somewhat secluded, being on Lake Leland about 20 miles south of Port Townsend, the nearest city of consequence. There’s not even a whole lot to do in Port Townsend other than shop or visit Fort Worden. The shopping is great, but unless the weather is also great, the fort isn’t much fun.

So, knowing that most of the activities would revolve around watercraft or indoor things, I got it into my head to suggest an activity that could provide amusement throughout the week. No, not a Monopoly tournament. Making a movie! Ok, just a short movie. I thought it would be fun, and something the whole family would enjoy, to conceive, write, and film a short movie at the lake house, to be edited and released later. Actually, I originally hoped to edit the movie and then burn DVDs for everyone on the last day, but that proved to be overly ambitious.

Having made the suggestion, with moderate interest, so began the process of coming up with a viable idea, breathing life into it as a story that could be filmed, and then writing the script. Alas, interest came and went in waves, so it was not a steady stream of activity to get the movie made. I didn’t want this to be “Greg’s Movie” where I write the story, and make up the lines and the scenes and slave-drive everyone into acting in it, so I did my best to let people provide input and act in scenes as the mood struck them. I know now that this is not the way to get a movie made. 😉 I ended up catching a nasty cold, but in the end I made a concerted effort to at least get all the scenes I needed “in the can” so to speak (the can being the SD card in my digicam) so that I could at least finish up the movie in the editing room (MacBook) later.

Once I got home, however, the cold continued to wreak havok on me, and then other things started taking up my time such that I kept putting off the editing. I also needed a couple more shots of things to add in. Well, the good news is that I finally got off my butt and got ‘er dunn. So without further ado, I present to you, “Magnetic House” by the Gaub Family Players.

There will soon be DVDs with full-quality copies of the movie as well as every photograph taken by every camera on vacation making their way to the mailboxes of the various households represented at the Lake House that week. “Soon” in the computer software development sense, that is. ;-)  I’m working on it… seriously!