A Grandchild’s Guide Turning your grandparents’ childhood memories into a video that your family will treasure

What are the next steps for you? This is going to be fun! It’s very likely that you are reading this because you or your parents have bought this as a gift to give one of your grandparents. Or your grandparent may have purchased this because he/she would love to have a fun project to work on with you. This project will involve you interviewing one of your grandparents, recording the interview on your smartphone and then you will edit it into a video adding some text, images and music. We provide all the questions that you will ask your grandparent and we also provide you with tips on how to do the interviews and tutorial videos on how to do the video editing. After the project, you can use your new video editing skills to become the next big YouTuber!  What are the next steps for you?  Ensure you download the booklet that is designed for your grandparent. Then get in touch with your grandparent and send him/her the booklet which explains everything they need to know and do. Before the interview, you will need to: Contact your grandparent to arrange a time to record the interview and ask them: To go to our website grandparentsmemories.com and take a look at an example childhood memories video. They will see that it is a very relaxed chat with a grandchild but the end result will look great. To read through the memory jogger questions in this booklet and mark the questions that they would like to be asked. This will ensure that they are asked questions that they feel will be the most interesting. To look though old photo albums and find some old photos of their parents and childhood. The questions cover the period up until the end of their teens so any photos of that period will look great in the video. On the back of each photo they need to write what age they were and a short description of what the photo is about.

What are the next steps for you?   Get your equipment ready for the interview You do not need to buy anything. You can record the interview with your phone. However, the quality of the video is dependant on the quality of the phone. If your parents have a better phone than you it would be best to use theirs. Check how much space is free on your phone before you go to record. It is a good idea to copy all the photos and videos that are on the phone to a computer to free up memory. There are two ways to position the video while you are recording. Option 1: Ask a family member to hold the camera Option 2: Place it on a tripod if you already have one   Option one is perfectly fine. It will result in an excellent video and won’t cost you anything. If you go for option two (if you already have a tripod) you will need to buy a tripod adjuster mount which holds your phone on top of the tripod. You can buy one on Amazon for £5. On Amazon search for Zacro Universal Smartphone Holder Mount 

What are the next steps for you?   Think about how to shoot the video You want the video to be as relaxed and natural as possible. To achieve this, your grandparent should not be talking directly into the camera. Instead, you should sit directly opposite your grandparent with the camera off to one side, see the photo below. Your grandparent then looks at you throughout the interview and doesn’t look towards the camera. Ensure that the room is well lit and ideally there should be a lamp next to your grandparent. Take a test clip and look at it to check that it is bright enough. When you are asking your grandparent the questions, try not to stick rigidly to the list of questions. If they are talking about something interesting ask them follow up questions such as “why was that?” or “Can you explain that in more detail? Etc.

What do you do after the interview? Editing the footage will be a lot of fun and if you have never done video editing before you will enjoy this. Whoever purchased this product on our website will have received an email with a username and password. You will need these to access the video tutorials on grandparentsmemories.com When you are logged into the website you will see a link in the top right corner called “My Courses”. Click on that and you will find step-by-step video tutorials showing you how to edit the video by doing things such as cutting out parts of clips, adding clips together, adding music and transitions, text effects and overlaying photos There is also a tutorial on how to upload the video to YouTube and share it privately with family and friends. Have fun! I hope you have fun doing this video project with your grandparent. Dylan Mangan Founder - Grandparentsmemories.com