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I ran a successful production
company in New York for about 15 years. It was called D.A.M. video productions, the slogan
was it looks DAM good.
With my production schedule, I always allotted one day a week
where I taught. And that led me to several Universities, but eventually Hofstra. I brought
in sort of a professional background of working in production into the classroom. I like to
develop a curriculum that uses very real world examples of production. So I like to teach
students to create and write and come up with scripts and ideas and the word I like to use
is translate them into sound and pictures. A real labor of love for me is a project I
have been working on over the last few years, called Life Lessons. At the heart of this
project is the thing that many senior citizens have learned through what I refer to as five
generations. In other words memories of their grandparents, their parents, themselves, their
children, and now most of them have grandchildren; some of them have great grandchildren. The
heart of Life Lessons is really trying to figure out what they have seen spanned through
all of those generations, ok, and really stick in terms of their life in things that they
remember and they live with and the ideas that they have on a daily basis. I do not
know where the project is going to ultimately lead me. But I really try to keep an open
mind. And I try to work very culturally diverse, really ethnic diverse, and see the things
that thread through peoples lives. I do usually a piece that runs anywhere from five
to ten minutes and sort of spans a senior citizens life. It could be anything from
just tracking their life through memories of their grandparents, the parents, through
the war, to the current lifestyle that they live. I have also tried to take the pieces
and shorten them up and do a one minute, almost like a PSA, with just a couple of highlights
of things that really stood out to me that people have learned and share and do in their
life. The senior citizen population is one that we all hope to join at some point and
to share what we have learned and to have people hear about our lives and what we thought
was special and maybe what we know is special. To be able to offer that type of outlet to
the seniors has been a wonderful challenge and a wonderful part of my career. It really
is a labor of love.