Henry loves to tell stories. And after a 20-year career sailing around the world as a naval officer and aviator, he has plenty to tell, although some get told more often than others. One unique story centers on the native inhabitants of one of the coldest places on Earth. This story became the subject of Corey’s most recent video project: a documentary titled Penguin Patrol about Henry’s exploits as a penguin wrangler in Antarctica.
While in the Navy, Henry was stationed in Antarctica twice to support research scientists. Support consisted of piloting the scientists around to various locations to do their work and helping them when necessary. One of the projects bestowed upon this group in the mid 1970’s was to collect the penguins that would establish the new exhibit at Sea World in San Diego, California. I think making the video was equally as adventurous as chasing these feathered tuxedoes across the ice.
Henry has boxes of slides, photos and Super 8 home movie reels that document his Antarctic journeys. Corey borrowed this collection and sought to edit pieces and parts into a video using Henry’s narration of the story as the voice over. One weekend he came home to film and record Henry narrating the story. Before coming home, he purchased a used movie projector online in order to digitize the old movie reels. He had the projector shipped to our house thinking it would be there the weekend he came home, but of course, it arrived the following Tuesday.
Corey needed to digitize the film Wednesday so the projector had to get from Frederick to Richmond by Tuesday evening. Easily resolved by “meeting in the middle” at Panera Bread in Dumfries, Virginia. We tracked the package all day Tuesday hoping it would arrive by late afternoon, which it did. Henry and I left the house after work and Corey left Richmond after class. Neither had too long a drive, and the stop in Dumfries yielded good food and another opportunity to see my kid, so that worked for everybody.
Then Corey called and said part of the audio wasn’t working out. So the next Sunday Henry and I tried re-recording a couple sentences using a professional mic and jerry-rigged sound booth. After several failed attempts due to mic problems, we accidentally discovered that the mic on Henry’s computer camera worked better than the one we were using so we were finally able to send a couple audio files to Corey. Which still didn’t work out. On to Plan B, which was to use graphic text instead.
The final result turned out great. Henry loves to tell the story about capturing the penguins and now it’s immortalized on film forever! Now if he wants to tell it, we can all just say, “Stop right there, we’ve seen the movie.” His daughters, budding movie critics and undoubtedly his biggest fans, shared their comments with him. Kimberly wrote from college, “It was really cool—very interesting and informative. It kinda makes you seem pretty old, though.” But Angela delivered the icy blow, “Gee Dad. I forgot you kidnapped penguins."
Life is tough when you’re a star.
