Video Making Process Reveals Clues

One of the many reasons to make a an ancestor story video is that the process can reveal clues from your evidence you haven’t noticed before.  The editing process requires you to look at images  and listen to narrative closely and repetitively, which I think, gives our brains the chance to see things with a slightly shifted perspective.  It happened to me with a video I made, W. Hunter Davis: A Civil War Journey.

When I found the two archival photographs that are featured in the video, one of William Hunter Davis and the other of his son William Albert Davis, they were sandwiched between the pages of a beautiful 19th century embossed leather bound photo album with crumbling binding.

I didn’t find the two photographs together in the album.  The photograph of the elder Davis, printed on thick four by two and a a half-inch card stock has the photographer’s engravings on the back.  The photograph of the son, William Albert, has no markings on the back, just a handwritten note: “W. A. Davis – about 1866.”  It wasn’t until I edited these two scanned images next to each other in the video that I noticed the similarities of the photo cards.

I won’t go into detail now about my theories of when and under what circumstances the photographs were taken as not to spoil the video.  But I have come to question my original theory about the circumstances leading to W. Hunter’s visit to the photographer.  I’ll compare those theories in a future blog post.  For now, watch the video and see what you think.

Any ideas or suggestions are welcome in comments below.

Have you made some assumptions about an ancestor and then discovered new information after taking another look? Share your discoveries in the comments.

Would you like to make a video but are not sure where to start?  I invite you to get my FREE Ancestor Story Tools to get you started. Just click here to get your reusable Ancestor Story Brainstorming tools.

Maybe you’ll make some new discoveries!