Forget the Oscars — Laguna Woods Video Club has own awards show

They couldn’t gather in person with food and wine this year, but Video Club members and their friends nonetheless celebrated their medium’s best with this year’s “Goldies” awards presented via Zoom.

Fifty-two Zoomers watched 10 four-minute videos on Feb. 18, and club members chose three entries for the top statuette awards, the Goldies — named for Laguna Woods’ Golden Rain Foundation and to pay tribute to the members themselves, the “golden oldies.”

This year would have been the club’s 11th annual awards banquet, and members expressed optimism that a makeup banquet might be held later, whenever the community returns to some form of normal.

Meanwhile, the internet enabled one participant to Zoom in from Bulgaria. The 15-year-old student presented her own short video of a piano player and was encouraged by the “golden oldies” to keep up her work.

Video Club member Stephanie Brasher earned first place in the Goldies for her video “Brig Pilgrim,” a eulogy to the Dana Point Ocean Institute’s tall ship Pilgrim, which sank in March 2020 while anchored in harbor. Brasher’s opening shot of the once proud, doomed vessel listing starboard is heartrending.

In the same video narrative, Brasher also pays homage to her daughter Jessica’s lifelong love for everything connected with the ocean. Jessica, a marine biologist, is now the director of husbandry at the Ocean Institute.

“All our vacations revolved around water and the ocean,” Stephanie  Brasher recalled.

“Brig Pilgrim” is a seamless stream of video clips and stills of Jessica over the years and other kids connecting to the ship and its environs.

“The Pilgrim is such a loss to the community. It was more than a ship, it was a school and a chance for kids to live history,” Brasher said. “Kids worked the ship like old sailors.”

Brasher treasures her Video Club membership as her own ongoing learning experience.

“When I moved here in 2016, I could barely turn on an iPad,” she said. “If you want to learn, you can.”

It’s a leap from a sunken tall ship to Legos, but club members provided just that in their choice of John Glassco’s “Lego Houdini” for second place in the Goldies awards. All the props and figures in the video are made of Lego components, and the result is at once masterful and playful, paying homage to that ultimate illusionist and escape artist, Harry Houdini.

For the contest, Glassco cut the action in the video from the original 10 minutes to the requisite four. It took him and his Paraglass Production partner Randy Parada 40 hours to shoot the entire video because of the painstaking animation process; one segment took 11 hours alone.

The project was a labor of love for Glassco’s grandson Luke, who was 10 when it began and 13 when it was completed.

“Luke was into magic and Legos, and he helped create the script and the sets,” Glassco said.

Glassco, a retired physician, is a Video Club member who lives in Laguna Niguel. (The club allows 10 percent of its members to be non-Village residents.) He and Parada began collaborating in 1971 but took a prolonged hiatus from filming. “Life happened,” Glassco said. Now, they collaborate on documentaries and animation.

A humorous, COVID-19-inspired video, “The Year 2020 in Four Minutes,” won third place for club member Don Hill. The lifelong (nonprofessional) photographer said he came to videography late in life.

“I am not normal when it comes to video,” said Hill, 88. “You should always write a good story first before you film — I only had a subject, COVID-19.”

Hill’s video shows him sunk in pandemic isolation: The house is a mess, he’s slumped in his recliner, and his slack features are topped by long hair with bangs. Even the scattered empty wine bottles look drunk.

“I don’t drink,” Hill said with a laugh. “I had to play-act.”

After his wife died more than two years ago, Hill threw himself into learning videography, including visual effects such as working with green screens, he said. In his award-winning video, he applies some of his newly acquired knowledge: In one scene, when he fantasizes about being in an Italian village, we see him inside a painting of such a village.

“I love to learn and then apply what I have learned in my videos. That way I am also providing a service to others,” Hill said.

Fred Harshbarger’s video shows how a group of lions deserves to be called a “pride.” His video “Lion Greeting Behavior” depicts the big cats returning to their group or family after a day of hunting. Their behavior, conveying joy, affection, a sense of connectedness and accomplishment, is captivating. It raises the question of why humans in their infinite arrogance could shoot them for sport.

“Most of the time when you see lions on safaris, the lions are asleep,” Harshbarger said. “Most of the time one does not see them on the move.”

Harshbarger said he has traveled in East Africa alone in rented vehicles and with hired guides. He took the noteworthy video in Tanzania in 2012. He credits his guides for pointing out that the lions, once they’re done hunting, show unique displays of affection for one another.

Tom Nash captured the majesty of the Oregon coast in “Beautiful Danger.” Why the title? While the rocky coastline has always been a photogenic treat, it also has spelled great danger for approaching ships.

To save the vessels, lives and commerce, 12 lighthouses were built along the coast. As Nash tells it, those lighthouses with their Fresnel lenses were technical marvels of their time, coded to warn ships where and when, if at all, it was safe to approach. Nash grew up in Oregon and said he was drawn to the structures because of their beautiful settings.

Lucy Parker’s video “Timepacing” is worthy of acclaim not only for its visual beauty but for the concept behind it. All of us wonder how and why and where to time flies after a certain age. Parker has made it into a subject of exploration.

“As a retired freelance writer, I have become interested in time management for seniors as a possible book or blog,” she said.

For her video, she gathered quotations on time and spirituality and curated them into a video conveying her message that memories matter and adaptation to change is essential for survival on spiritual and physical levels.

To make the video, she relied on clips, photos and music available online.

It begins: “Live each season as it passes … and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”

Most certainly,  words to live by.

To find out more about the Video Club and its classes, go to https://ift.tt/3dR6ChP. The 10 videos will at some point appear on the club’s website and will also be shown on Village Television.

 

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