This project was a ton of fun to create! #MuseumSurvivalKit is a social media project that many museums have contributed to since the stay-at-home orders have begun in many states. GCV&M has put together a few posts so far (p.s. the links to our other projects are at the bottom!) and I wanted to get in on the action as well! Museum Survival Kit says this about their project: “The #MuseumSurvivalKit social media project was developed during an online happy hour when five history museum advocates got excited about how the field can help now and have a little fun doing it.”
So this is how the idea for “How to Make a Silhouette at Home” came about! While being so far away from the museum, I wanted to create something that could be a fun project that people could do at home with materials that they already probably had and show off our lovely collections items.
From beginning to end I enjoyed the experience of making this video. From getting to play director, to cracking jokes in the voice overs, to coming up with a creative solution when I realized I didn’t even have all of the required materials at home to make a silhouette, it was just plain fun! Some of the best bloopers however came from behind-the-scenes. In an effort to make the video, I had to completely dismantle my dining room to make room for the production. I also moved nearly all the lamps I own to be around the table, just to get the lighting right. Finally, I begged my partner to be my guinea pig for the video, to which he begrudgingly agreed to.
However, one of my favorite moments of the video-making process was when I tried to experiment with a smaller piece of paper. Basically, what happened was, my partner’s shadow was bigger than the standard 8.5″ x 11″ piece of copy paper I had so, I wanted to try and experiment to see if I could trace an accurate outline inside of the shadow rather than right along the edge of the shadow. If you watched the video, I edited in his reaction to seeing the result of this attempt. Here’s an image of the experiment…
Pretty bad, right? We pretty much lost it for a solid minute over this. I guess that just means that I’m not cut out (pun intended) for eyeballing a silhouette! Anyway, many laughs like this were shared throughout this process and I just hope that whoever watches the video and tries the project out has just as many laughs along the way!
Check out the other #MuseumSurvivalKit projects we’ve done!
Written by Hannah Barber, Collections Manager at Genesee Country Village & Museum.
Genesee Country Village & Museum Blog 