Episode Number 4

OK, we still haven't officially determined what the long term name will be but that is partly because I haven't found the time to make a new title segment. When I find some time, I will come up with it. I have had some good suggestions and I know that at some point, I will decide. In the mean time, however, it will continue to be the Wilkinson Quints Show.

Last week, one of the volunteers mentioned the Reflections contest that is going on in Elementary schools. She said they had a new video category and the theme was, "I can make a difference by..." Well, we looked it up and the rule for videos was that the student had to write, direct, shoot, and edit their own video by themselves without adult interference. That seemed a little bit hard but we went ahead and asked Riley what he thought. We told him about how he needed to write a storyboard so that he knew what he was going to do before he started using the camera. He actually came up with a great little storyboard and decided all the things he wanted to do. I next showed him how to use our smaller video camera and set it up on a tripod. The rest was up to him. After he finished videotaping, he had to edit it. I showed him the basics of how to use Windows Movie Maker and gave him some pointers along the way. He actually chose all of the clips and trimmed them all himself.

Although it may not seem very impressive when you watch it I thought it was great. The lighting is a little inconsistent and the audio isn't perfect but, heck, he only turned seven in June so I guess I can cut him some slack. In reality, I was totally proud of him! The only problem with the whole thing is that now he thinks he wants to grow up and make videos for a living even though Rachelle and I really would like him to be a Statistician, Engineer, or doctor of some sort. Well, we will see.

The likelyhood of him actually winning the contest is probably pretty small but it was a great thing for him to do. He said his next one will be titled, "Riley and Kaiya having fun".

Aside from that, we determined that the van will not fit in the garage without taking air out of the tires. Our garage is actually long enough but not tall enough. I might take another look at it but for right now, we are going to have to park it outside which is OK because it helps people find our house. The van is really fun to drive but we determined that we will probably need to get one of those little rear view cameras so that we can see what is behind us.

Well, we have some really good ideas for our show coming up. Now, if we can just get the time. If we can't, then I guess Riley will just do them for us.