Making My First Movie

In February of 2020, I took an online class during RootsTech (an international genealogical conference sponsored by the people at FamilySearch). During this class, students were encouraged to share their genealogical findings through the medium of short videos. We were taught how to mash up still images and audio recordings to tell quick family history stories.

Back in 2000, I self-published a book entitled Descendants of George Edward von Gentzkow of Minneiska, Minnesota : a history of the Gentzkow family in America. While researching for that book, I traveled across America, met incredible people, collected old photographs and listened to many stories. To me, the pursuit of family history is just as interesting as collecting the data.

Intrigued by this movie-making process, I set myself to the task. First, I gathered a couple of photos. Then I wrote up a two-minute script.

Here it is, my first movie: