I filmed this video of my family’s backyard bonfire with a point n’ shoot while visiting home over the winter break. (Kate, here’s your shout out.) It features my girlfriend, Kate Drance, my father and some new and old friends who are traveling across the country on a luxury touring bus. (Thanks Aric, Tim and Robin!). I think they’ll agree, that sitting around the fire and eating fresh oyster stew wasn’t a bad way to start Louisiana. Tim?

I gotta say, I like this short clip. And it probably has a lot to do with, if not all, my old family home and the song selection. “The Lonely Shepherd” stuck with all of us who watched and liked Kill Bill. When I heard it coming out of the F-train at Broadway-Lafayette today, it prompted me to finally make this clip in iMovie. (Side note here: After you’ve managed to learn Final Cut basics, iMovie is wretchedly counter-intuitive. Yes, I’m slightly bragging.)

Watching the footage with the song produced, for lack of a better word, an emotion, granted, probably because it’s my old family home. But it also really hammered home the cold hard fact – that Professor Duy pointed out today in NYC24 – that if your audio is off, your video, no matter how good, suffers…badly. The music over the top of Backyard Bonfire, to state the obvious, really makes an impact. But you compare. See it without the song. Mmmm, oyster stew.

Comes out on January 6, 2009 on PBS. Geaux Martin.