JCHC First Look: Civil War 150th Anniversary Commemoration

Hello everybody!

Today has been spent working on getting the word out on the next big thing going on at the JCHC.  What we are planning is a five-year commemoration of the Civil War.

2011 marks the 150th anniversary of the war, and museums and historical organizations across the country are busy putting together exhibits and programs to commemorate the people effected by the conflict.

To read more about our plans and efforts, please follow this link to the JCHC e-Newsletter presenting the first information about the commemoration.
(Note: This is a sneak preview of the e-Newsletter scheduled for delivery on Monday, Feb. 14th)

A lot of excitement can be felt around the History Center as we prepare to unveil our very first contribution in this five-year event.

Keep looking for updates along the way as more information can be shared about our commemorative celebration.

-Nathan

JCHC Updates: 105th Updates

Hello everyone.  Today, I've been spending some time putting the finishing touches on the 105th project video.  The meat and potatoes of the entire thing is done, but I'm adding a bit more flavor to it.  I decided to add in a little "Effects of the War" portion to focus on some individuals in the regiment and how the war impacted the soldiers.  This portion of the video will include some stories of officers as well as looking at the large number of men lost due to battle. Included will be some images of actual soldiers in the 105th regiment that we have in the JCHC archives.  Hopefully, this will allow the users to connect more to the story of these men and all the miles that they traveled along their five year journey.

Did you know, the 105th regiment ranks among the top ten regiments for men that were killed or died of wounds?  Out of the 1,992 men that enlisted with the regiment, 245 died...that's 12.2% of the members!

On a side note, I also updated the "Board Member" portion of the JCHC website.  I've added pictures of a few of the board members...the remainder are soon to come.

-Nathan

JCHC Updates: Back From Break

Hello everybody!  After a long hiatus from being on winter break, I'm finally back at the JCHC.  There is a lot that I have to look forward to, and I'll discuss that later.  Right now, here is a brief update:

Over the break, I finished my work on the 105th video project and am just waiting for some critique and any corrections or changes that need to be adapted into the project.  I also just finished an article for our print Newsletter that will be sent out in the next week or two.  The article was on the technology that I've worked into the JCHC including Facebook and our eNewsletter emails.  Speaking of the eNewsletter, there will be a new issue being sent out sometime between today and Friday.  Very exciting stuff!

-Nathan

JCHC Updates: Video Narration

Grinding away at the narration for the 105th.  I have both 1861 and 1862 scripted and ready to record.  Only three more years to do...

-Nathan

JCHC Updates: Back To Work on the 105th

Hello everybody.  Today, I went back to work on the 105th video project after a small hiatus.  Basically, I paused the project so I could have a break from the monotony.  So, the 105th is back in my foreground right now, and video editing is consuming myself.  I'm looking to have all the timing done on the videos before next week so that I can start the narration process from home over the Thanksgiving holiday.  Hopefully by being at home, I'll have a quiet place to record the audio without the hustle and bustle of people in and out at the JCHC all day.  Stay tuned for more information and some previews in the near future.

-Nathan

JCHC Fun Fact: Behind the Name "Wild Cats"

If you have been following my progress on the 105th PA regiment project, you have probably noticed that this group of soldiers was sometimes known by their nickname, the "Wild Cat Regiment."  Today, I thought I would take some time to explain why these men got their nickname.

Historically, in the Jefferson-Clarion-Clearfield area, there were many operations on the exploration of oil.  Most of these operations were individual operations where drilling was done in an areas where there were no known deposits of oil.  This process of oil exploration and drilling became known as "wildcat" drilling. This type of drilling is very high risk for investors due to the uncertainty of striking the "black gold."  A "wildcat well" would be the result if a driller got lucky.  The definition of a "wildcat well" is one drilled outside of and not in the vicinity of known oil or gas fields.  Because these "wildcat" drilling operations were common in the area in which the 105th regiment was mustered out of, they received the nickname "Wild Cats."

References:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/tcreynolds/tcrfamily.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_well
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/wildcatdrilling.asp

So, there you have it, the history behind the name.

Today, my work at the JCHC has consisted of browsing the internet looking for different listings for our organization.  I am doing this to find any errors in contact information, hours of operation, and any other mistakes.  So far, I have contacted a handful of various sites that had the History Center listed with the necessary changes.  Hopefully things will be fixed and help us connect to more interested people.

Next week, we are having Kid Day #2 here at the JCHC.  I plan on, this time, taking the morning walking tour and documenting more of the experience.  Hopefully I will get to play with my new toy that day, a Flip UltraHD camcorder.  I'll definitely work on sharing some of the videos in order to give everyone an idea of what we offer here at the History Center.  Hopefully, I can put together something similar to a movie trailer that would sum up what a trip to the JCHC entails for a classroom.  Maybe it will allow us to get more interested parties into the building in the future.

As always, don't hesitate to contact me for questions or comments.

-Nathan

JCHC Updates: New Poster

Today, I decided to take a little time and see what I could do in the field of graphic design to help promote the JCHC.  I figured using our Bowdish Model Railroad exhibit as a test subject would be rather appropriate since we have shows open to the public every month.  Using photoshop, I was able to come up with this:

This is just the beginning.  I really enjoy doing things like this, and I'm looking forward to seeing what I can come up with in the future.  

To update you on the status of the 105th project, I started doing a lot of research regarding Colonel Amor A. McKnight.  I figure on having a separate video in the project just based on his life and time spend commanding the 105th.  He was a very interesting man, and I hope to show him in that manner.

That's all for now.  Feel free to contact me for any reason.

-Nathan

JCHC Updates: 105th Project Updates

Hello.  This is my first post in awhile.  I ended up leaving work early last Thursday and did not make it in on Friday due to a cold that has been going around.  But, now I'm back at it with some updates for everyone.

First of all, on Thursday before I went home early, our website designer came in to give me some walkthroughs on how the site is managed and maintained.  He also gave me a rundown on how our touch screen podiums work throughout the museum.  A lot if it is really technical and will take some time to practice, but with time I believe that I will be able to do a lot more and incorporate some of my own ideas both on the touch screens and the website.

Last week, before my sick hiatus, I continued my work on the 105th video.  Right now, a lot of the work is going into scripting the narration as well as editing the video's timing to match.  This is a lot of time consuming work that is very monotonous and dull at times.  Blogging is a great way to take a break and escape the dull for a little bit.

Today, I finished up the final outline for the "1861" narration as well as the video timing that goes along with it.  Since the office here isn't the best environment to record audio narration, I moved on to doing the same for the "1862" video.  While working on the narration, just like before, the opportunity for supplemental slides presented themselves.  So, along with the scripting and editing, I also designed a few more still slides to better help visualize different thing from the video.  Here is an example slide:

Hopefully, images like this will add to the overall presentation of the project and make the video more accessible to all the viewers.

That's it for now.  Stay tuned for more updates along the way, and as always, feel free to contact me with questions or comments.

-Nathan

JCHC First Look: 105th Editing

I thought I'd share some updates on my 105th video project on this dreary, wet day in Brookville.  Yesterday, I finally finished doing the last of the video screen captures from Google Earth that will act as the primary focus for the project.  So, today I started sitting down and putting everything into iMovie.  The way I'm editing this is by year; 1861 will be it's own video, as will 1862, 1863, and so on.  I also have separate videos for my title sequence and the credits.  This will essentially allow the viewer to select the year in which they would like to view.

Now that everything is in place in iMovie, I sat down with a pencil and a sheet of paper to write narration for the movie.  Here is a picture of the mess:

While drafting the narration, I realized that there is need for more supplemental visuals in the video.  This will help to break up the monotonous virtual tour of the Google Earth screen captures.  If you take a close look at my narration under 1861, you'll notice I have marked where a "Secession Graphic" will fit into the video.  I searched to find something that I liked and could use, but this was not very successful.  So, I decided to make my own.  Here is what I came up with:

I think that this will work nicely in the video to show the Confederate States and when they actually seceded from the Union.  This is the first of what will probably be many supplemental slides that will be created over the course of editing.

These slides aren't the only thing that I've been working on today.  I also started some music editing for the video.  I found a Library of Congress page with primary sources for Civil War Music.  On it, I found a download for a version of the Civil War era song "When Johnny Comes Marching Home"performed by the Airforce Band of Liberty.  I wanted to see what music would sound like in the intro for the project, so I used GarageBand to adjust the audio levels to fade in and out in the timeframe that I needed:

After the initial editing, I put the newly created .mp3 file into the iMovie.  Take a look and listen to what the intro the the 105th project might end up looking like:




That may or may not be the actual music that I use in the final version of this, but I wanted to play around with some audio to get an idea of what the end product will be like.

Feel free to leave comments or ask questions.

-Nathan

JCHC First Look: 105th Menu Setup

A busy day requires two posts :)

I've been working with iDVD to design a format for the project that will allow interactivity through the touch screens in our museum.  What I had in mind was a menu in which you could select a particular year that the regiment was active, and then you would be shown a video of the events that occurred during that year.  I started fooling around with the iDVD program to see what I could come up with.  Here is an early version of what I'm envisioning:

This setup will ideally allow you to just "touch" one of the years and be taken on a visual journey through that year.  We'll see how this all comes together in the future.

-Nathan

JCHC First Look: 105th Title Slides

Back to work this week on the 105th video project.  Instead of spending my day fooling around with Google Earth again, I figured I would spend some time with the overall design of the video.

The first thing I decided needed some work was the opening title for the video.  So, I spent some time with Adobe Photoshop CS5 designing a basic title.  What I came up with was an image of an old Civil War era map on a piece of tattered and worn parchment paper.
Take a look:

The process for making this involved me finding this parchment texture through the Google Image Search:

                                             

Then, I had to find a map texture to overlay on the parchment.  Once again, Google Image Search was used to find this:

Once I had the two images that I desired, I did a bit of simple photo editing with Photoshop to layer the images together and blend them into one.

The next step was to add the title text.  For this step I first made a slide with "Tracking the Wild Cats:" and then made a slide with "Tracking the Wild Cats: The Story of the One Hundred and Fifth Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers."  By having two slides that are just slightly different, I was able to transition them together to get a neat effect.

Check out the test video:

That about does it for now...
Time to go work on some more slide design for the video.

As always, feel free to contact me with any questions or comments.

-Nathan

JCHC First Look: 105th Video Test

Today, I decided to start experimenting with screen capture and video editing.  The software that I use to capture the video from Google Earth is called iShowU.  I tested out a few different video screen capture software for Mac OS X, and this one does everything that I want and is relatively easy to use.  For the editing software, I'm running iMovie '08.  In middle school, iMovie had just come out on the market, and my school actually offered a class in iMovie editing (which was one of my favorite classes I've ever taken).  The software has changed a lot since the last time I was an active user, so I'm still getting used to some of the features that this newer version offers.

I did a few tests to see how the editing will work on this video and compiled it into a preview to share.  By no means is this anywhere close to what the final project will look like, but it does offer a little taste into what the end result will include.

Enjoy!

Sorry about the end of the video.  I was having a little trouble getting the timing down for the narration, but I wanted to share this preview.  This is still very much a work in progress.  Whenever I have more clips to share, I'll definitely post them.

-- For anybody that uses YouTube, feel free to subscribe to my new channel.  It will be the host to all the videos I make while working at the JCHC.  --

http://www.youtube.com/NJPearceJCHC

As always, feel free to contact me for questions or comments.

-Nathan

JCHC First Look: Tracking the 105th

I've been hard at work on a project dealing with not only Jefferson County history, it also has deep ties to Civil War history.  For those of you who don't know, the American Civil War was fought between 1861 and 1865.  Next year, being 2011, marks the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.  In Pennsylvania, there is a statewide partnership of history organizations coming together to create a project called Pennsylvania Civil War 150 (PACW 150).  PACW 150 will honor and commemorate the lives lost and the freedoms gained through the war.


Because of PACW 150, you can expect new exhibits within the JCHC starting next year.  This is where my project comes into play.  Right here in Brookville, a group of young men were formed into the 105th Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers.  They were active in the war from 1861 all the way to 1865.  Here at the History Center, we thought it would be a good idea to display some artifacts from the 105th, share their photos, and most importantly, tell their story.  Since my goal here at the JCHC involves using technology throughout the museum, I started planning a project that will present the story of the 105th in an interactive manner.  In the museum, we have some touch screen monitors that include some narratives to go along with the exhibits.  My goal is to use one of these monitors to display a video made by using Google Earth that displays not only the locations the 105th found themselves, but also narratives of the events at each major location (battle information, outcome, assignments, etc.).  I envision being able to walk up to the touch screen, touch what year you'd like to hear about, and then being taken on the journey with the 105th.


Yesterday, I finished plotting the points within Google Earth for this project.  Here is what it looks like:

Each of the yellow pushpins represents a certain date that was important to the 105th.  At each of the pushpins, a balloon filled with text pops up, describing the events that took place at that location on that date.  Here is what one looks like:

Once I have all the balloon captions to my liking, the next step will be to screen capture the "flight" from one pushpin to another.  At each pin, the balloon will pop up and the text will be visible.  However, my plan is to also narrate the video once all the screen capture is done and I start the video editing.  Click here for a very low quality example of what video will eventually look like.  (Note: the software used to take this screen capture is not the same that will be used to make the actual video...the choppiness will disappear in the final project)


That about wraps up the first look into my first project at JCHC.  Be sure to check back for more updates in the near future.  If you have questions or comments, feel free to contact me.


-Nathan

JCHC Grad Assistant Blog: Introduction

Hello,

My name is Nathan Pearce.  In the spring of 2010, I graduated from Clarion University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Secondary Education Social Studies.  I decided at that time that I wanted to continue on and get a graduate degree.  So, I enrolled in Clarion University's Master of Education program with a concentration in Technology.  The same time that I applied for the Master's program, I also applied for a position as a graduate assistant.  Fortunately enough, the History Department at Clarion offered me a position at the Jefferson County History Center in Brookville, Pennsylvania.

This blog is my attempt to document and share my work while at the JCHC.  My position as graduate assistant is one that has a lot of flexibility.  Since I do have a background in Social Studies education and I am currently learning how to properly use and incorporate technology for educational purposes, I am focusing my efforts at the Historical Center on technology.  I'm currently learning how to manage the website (bear with me!).  I am also working on an ambitious project dealing with the Civil War.  Using Google Earth, I am plotting the different locations of major happenings of the 105th Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers (these guys were mostly from Jefferson County) and documenting the battles and events in which they were exposed.  I plan on making an interactive display using a touch-screen monitor that will provide a narrated, visual tour through these locations.  This display will be incorporated in our future exhibit on the 105th.

Be on the lookout for images, links, and other media dealing with my projects and work as the graduate assistant at the Jefferson County History Center.

-Nathan