This holiday season is an especially poignant one for Sharon Emerson, a 33-year-old studio director for a small company in Chicago that makes games for the Web.
She is currently hard at work making a CD for relatives -- her first such gift -- which will largely be a memorial to her Latvian grandmother, who died last year. For the CD, which is structured as a large family tree, Emerson has gathered old 8mm film that includes movies of her father's prom in 1958 and her parents' wedding in 1963, and a video tour that Emerson's grandmother gave of her apartment before she died. "I especially loved her pink bathroom," Emerson said.
Emerson's project began as a Web site, but when the videos began to stack up, she switched media. The CD will also include Emerson's grandmother's favorite recipes and digital reproductions of old letters, many of them written half in Yiddish, half in Russian.
Like others, Emerson finds that the technology has changed her ideas about what constitutes the perfect gift. "Ten years ago, I just would have distributed cool photos I dug up of my family, or created elaborate frames for pictures," she said. "Now, with a CD burner, I can wrap everything up in a nice package."
It was the relative ease with which the old videotape can be transferred to a CD that motivated her. "I've been sitting on those 8mm films for years," she said. "So technology has absolutely allowed me to create this gift for my family."
Emerson plans to send the CD out to five family members. "I don't want just a map of names," Emerson said. "I want something where generations beyond me can get a feel for who these people are."
Even the most fanatic of holiday filmmakers recognize that there are limits. The Whitmers are on a campaign to reduce the stress in their lives, which means that Keith Whitmer might not finish the movie in time to send it as a Christmas gift. In that case, he said, refusing to fret, he will make the best of it: he will end the movie with holiday scenes and send it out in time for Groundhog Day.
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