No matter how much time you spend on preproduction...

I just finished watching the video of my baptism. The sound on the home video is bad, but I think it will be perfect for the piece. Right at the end, my family all breaks down and starts laughing. I don't know if you'll be able to hear it, but I can probably narrate that detail. This all went down on my 8th birthday, so my mom also sings "happy birthday" on it. Might be an interesting bit to include. At the end of my baptism on the video, there is a little bit of all of us kids in a GTE parade. The announcer says something to the effect of "memory lane 1992"... that might be a cool bit to use to introduce that section on the piece. I could start with their courtship, then the early marriage, then when we get to the divorce part, use that as the intro? Not a bad idea. I averted a major production crisis today (or what could have been). My sister-in-law called to tell me that my brother had to work on the night that I planned to record the conversation between us siblings. I kind of freaked out and vented to my mom about how "no one is taking the time for this and it is important and I only ask them for three days out of the entire year and blah blah blah"... it turned out fine. In fact, it probably turned out better. Originally, we were all going to chat over dinner after I had interviewed all three of them. Now, I'm going to record a conversation BEFORE any of us chat one-on-one. I think this will actually be good because we won't be sick of talking about it at that point. Ha. Also, it will get their brains in the reminiscing mode... ready to brain dump when we have our one-on-one recording sessions. My mom is being really supportive of this. My dad not so much. My siblings are all being super cooperative. I get easily stressed out. When the first plan went wrong, I freaked. And it actually ended up better. I need to chill.