Messing about with video

One of my favourite occupations is messing about with movie clips to music. I sometimes make DVDs from video I've shot which I edit to fit to music. This takes me ages, so I don't do it often. But I decided last week that I wanted to do a short 'movie' as an introduction to my presentations about The Boy with Two Heads. 


The main part of my presentation is usually readings from the story that are relevant to facts, figures and photos that interest my audience. These may be about the Ancient Olympics, life and religion in Ancient Greece, the consequences of head injury, or any other facet of the story. But I wanted to prepare something for people to watch as they come in to the venue and settle down, and also to end with as we all leave. 

aerial view of Ancient Olympia in ?2000

The Greek part of the story of The Boy with Two Heads moves from ancient Athens via a journey by ship to ancient Olympia. I visited Olympia in 2007 (before the horrendous forest fires of August that year) and took movie of my wanderings through the ruins. I combined parts of this with stills and edited them to fit the theme music from the film Chariots of Fire which is by Vangelis (who is, of course, Greek). This took me two happy days.

St Andrews, Fife, Scotland

(By the way, the scene of men running on a beach that opens 'Chariots of Fire' was shot on the north beach at St Andrews in Scotland. A few years ago I stood on that same beach - but the weather was better than in the movie!)


Meanwhile, Connie at Trifolium Books is working on the restyling of the text of the story for the e-book. We want to get this uploaded by the end of the month. 

We spent some time working on that together last week. The weather was sunny but chilly and, during a break in our endeavours, we took a turn in Connie's garden. There were violets and forget-me-nots everywhere, lambs in the field next door, and blackbirds nesting by the house. I even saw my first swallow on the way home. They are said to be three weeks later than usual this year.