JCHC Updates: PA Civil War 150 Roadshow

Be sure to check out PACW150's Civil War Road Show this summer at the Jefferson County Fair on July 21 - 23, sponsored by the Jefferson County Historical Society!

JCHC First Look: "Drumbeat To War"

As March approaches, so does the opening for our first 150th anniversary commemorative Civil War exhibit, Drumbeat to War.  This exhibit is planned to feature depictions, dioramas, and original artifacts dealing with the recruiting process, training, and camp life of the recruits from Jefferson County at the start of the war.

In 1861, many Americans thought that the Civil War would only last a very short time.  Originally, a term of service that men signed up for in the spring of '61 was for a period of only three months.  Soon, the American people would realize that the war would last a lot longer than only three months.

Our exhibit captures the excitement and expectations directly related to 1861.  Right now, we are trying to finish everything up before the opening.  For me, this means work on designing signage.

Take a look at what the gallery housing the exhibit looks like at the moment:

-Nathan

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 First Look: Civil War Maps

As I've mentioned before, the JCHC is participating in the Pennsylvania Civil War 150th Anniversary movement.  Since 2011 marks 150 years since the beginning of the war, we are currently in the process of developing a new exhibit about soldiers from the area and life as a Civil War era soldier.  One thing that was needed were some custom maps to be put on display...so, this is where I got to apply my technological skills.

Basically, we needed an 8" x 10" map that showed desired locations.  What I did, by using Photoshop, was merge together outline maps of a few states that include borders and major rivers.  I then had to pinpoint exact locations, mark them on my map, and label everything.  I'm quite pleased with how these turned out.  Here is an example:

Now I have to go finish my work on the rest.  Feel free to leave questions and comments.

-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: 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