I'm Ready For My Close-Up, Mr. DeMille

It's video day today. A video crew is arriving shortly to help me put together a five to ten minute video of my life with ALS.

A couple of months ago, a PALS in one of my online groups asked for volunteers to put together a short presentation, perhaps five to ten minutes, of what ALS has done to their lives. The videos were for use at the Rock Out ALS Concert in Woodinville, Washington. It's a fundraiser for ALS research. Stephanie, the PALS asking, said she would prefer a live body, but that would be impossible for me, thanks to a combination of competing events and lack of money for the trip down to Seattle. So I offered to do a video.

My original plan had been to do a slide presentation with a voice-over, something I could easily put together on my laptop. I have plenty of pictures from before ALS, digital photos taken over the last 15 years of various family vacations, business trips, and home life. And I certainly have pictures of my post ALS life, some as recent as the last Betty's Run.

Then CTV came to interview me about Physician Assisted Dying. I asked the cameraman if he knew anyone who might do a video or slide project with me. I described what Stephanie was looking for, and he volunteered to do it himself, with another videographer. Suddenly my plans for a slide show changed to a short film! Well, I am not expecting that much, but with young film-makers, you never know.

So they will arrive shortly. Katherine and I will serve them hamburgers and salad for lunch; the first rule of working with volunteers is to feed them. We'll discuss the project and decide what we want to put together, then we will start taking video. Tomorrow we will take more video, most likely while homecare is here and more after that. Then I will wait a couple of weeks for post-production and voila! I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.