Vault

In the limited time that WideWaterFilms has been in operation, it has produced some of the most stunningly mediocre short-films in the history of mankind. Yet, as Grover once said "where there is life, there is hope."

Therefore, if to serve as nothing more than an object lesson to discourage those of little talent, WideWaterFilms has made the majority of their film vault available on the Internet for your private viewing only, no resposting or broadcasting on Fox allowed. All videos are encoded in the dreaded Windows Media Player 9 format, sorry about that. If we can figure out a better way that doesn't result in huge files then we'll move to that.

Please remember that these are silly little items created just for fun. They have been encoded down to a size and resolution suitable for web posting which also makes them appear even worse than normal. They also may include portions that are still under copyright. If you represent a holder, or are just miffed, please e-mail us and we will remove the offending item.

For those that care... my "weapons of choice" used in the creation of these files are VideoReDo (to clean the MPeg2 captures from my Adaptec VideOh board), ProShow Gold (for flicker-free slideshows with the "Ken Burns" Effect), the amazing EditStudio non-linear-editor (with some extra plugins from RosaNegra), and DVD-Lab Studio (to create the DVD menu systems, which you can't see here, but trust me, they are impressive).

I've recently begun learning about subtitles. Wow, it takes an amazing amount of work to prepare them. VisualSubSync makes the job a lot easier.

And, as part of our ongoing "giving back to the community" initiative, we have made our massive DVD clipart collection available to the world.

Sacajawea Presentation (4.68MB, 00:02:02)

Natalie has the same wonderful 3rd-Grade teacher that Amelia had. The best part for me is that I now have copies of the oral presentations for both girls.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy Natalie telling you all about Sacajawea.

Valentine's Day 2009 (9.16MB, 00:04:07)

We're back to the music videos (sort of)

I just couldn't pass up singing this song and doing a retrospective of life with my girls. I don't know if they'll really appreciate it now... but they will someday.

Until then, you can see it here (in slightly better than normal quality).

Burt's 49th Birthday Celebration (3.9MB, 00:08:56)

Suprise!.

Our friend Burt was turning 49 and his wife wanted a slideshow of him, his friends, and his family.

I suggested we have "greetings" from people on it. Rather than have people record their voice, deliver it to me, and then deal with tapes, CDs or lord knows what... I found a free service offered by K7.net where they give you a voice-mail box that emails you WAV files of the messages left there. Perfect. People could do it from their home phone (a piece of tech that most people can figure out) and I get a computer-ready file.

I was desperate for a "unifying theme" until I found a newsreel of the opening of the "First Private Atom Power Plant" that happened just two days after Burt was born.

Daisy Days (8.3MB, 00:19:28)

My "little hobby" is taking on a life of its own. I'm hearing more and more often "oh, Eric can make a DVD for that."

I'm not complaining; it's fun and, since I'm doing it for things I like and not charging money, there isn't (much) stress.

This project was a "year in review" slideshow for Natalie's Daisy Girl Scout Troop. Tons of pictures, beautiful music, and the girls' own voices.

Fun Fact: I know most of the people who's music I used. Tim Heintz (second song) went to high-school with my sister and used to play the organ at our church, Catherine McDonald (third song) is one of the music teachers at my daughter's school, and William Cushman (last song) is a cool dude who posts great music on his blog.

Amelia Earhart Presentation (1.8MB, 00:04:02)

Amelia had a great 3rd Grade teacher who had the kids doing all sorts of interesting things. One of their projects was to research a historical figure and then give an oral presentation as though they were that person. Pretty nifty.

When we got the note reminding us that the kids had to bring their props on the day assigned because he had a lot of kids to videotape and not a lot of time for "make up" presentations... I got an idea that sounded good at the time. I offered to take the videos and make a DVD out of them.

It was certainly fun working with DV-captured material. But, I didn't take into account the fact that he was borrowing a camera that needed serious cleaning and that he wasn't too comfortable using. Four of the kids had to give their presentations multiple times because I'd get the tape and there would be "issues."

On the plus side, one kid had deaf parents and I wanted them to be able to "hear" his presentation so I learned how to do subtitles. I also learned how use playlists and make spiffy menu transitions in DVD-Lab.

A Heart-Felt Holiday (9.89MB, 00:22:09)

Progress marches on. Some of us ride floats in the parade as we feel ourselves being drawn to a "bright new future.." While others of us sit on the curb with a bag of snacks and wave as the parade goes by. I'm not too sure which group I fit in yet.

Our 2005 Holiday DVD turned out a little odd. I shot the openning scene "on a whim" using my Kodak digital still-camera while we were in Hawaii. I was planning on a whole "island theme" production. Then I got the idea of having the girls ask an animated stick-man about Santa. After spending a whole day messing around with the animation software; I knew it would take too long and I had to go to Plan B.

Of course, I didn't have a Plan B. It was then that the girls and I seized on the idea of using puppets. It worked well. So we1l that I used then in any scene that I could.

A Moment with SuperBaby (1MB, 00:02:16)

This is an odd little piece. It's a modern "Kodak Moment."

We were visiting my parents' house on Halloween (2004) and teasing our new cousin, Lucian, with a laser pointer. He was following it around on the floor and just being darn cute.

During the episode, someone commented what a shame it was that we didn't have a video camera. Well... my Kodak CX7430 digital still-camera has a video mode and a 1GB SD card. It certainly isn't anywhere near the quality of a "real" video camera, but I captured this little moment and was able to give my sister a reasonably watchable DVD the next time we saw her.

WideWaterFilms Leader (548KB, 00:00:13)

This is the "leader" film that I put at the beginning of all my DVDs.

The text ripples due to the "warp" plugin from RosaNegra

I've replaced the original (and completely unoriginal) text logo with a fancy new one created by the wonderful and creative people at Harris Graphic Services.

Music Video (1.46MB, 00:03:16)

The girls wanted to make a movie as a Valentine's Day present. Here they are singing "Accidently in Love."

I used the "Old Film" effect in EditStudio for the flashback segments. One of my kids asked "why does it look funny?" I forgot they've been raised in the Age-of-DVDs and have never seen bad black-and-white film.

Wedding Video (3.62MB 00:08:01)

No, I wasn't at my parents' wedding back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. But I did digitize the deteriorating VHS of the deteriorating super-8 film. And, It's just fun to look at.

The Truth About Horses (1.65MB 00:03:41)

This was a surprise. The girls worked out a story and created backgrounds. Then, they asked if I could film them and turn it into a movie. I guess they caught the "movie bug" also.

The background music is "Thursday Afternoon" from Bill Cushman's Ghost Notes

Christmas DVD motion menu (5.4MB 00:00:57)

We are so proud of this we just had to put it on-line. This is the motion menu for the "Bug & Nat's Christmas 2004" DVD. Some have claimed (and they may be right) that it is better than the movie it leads to. Only the first minute is shown here. We wanted to encode it at a higher quality than normal.

Bug & Nat's Christmas 2004 (7.9MB 00:17:53)

This has everything; special effects, music, interviews, bad ballet, and a killer slide-show. It is rumored that Warner Brothers moved up the release date of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" so as not to compete. We have been unable to confirm that.

Santa Babies (5.3MB 00:12:09)

This one holds a special place in my heart. It was our first "serious" project (done under our old name of StormCo Filmitoque). The girls were finally old enough to take direction and Amelia did a wonderful job with the opening narration. Watch the credits for some cute bloopers.

The video is a little jumpy because we still hadn't figured out that we were suffering from a bad case of field-order-reversal.

Birthday Present 2003 (9.7MB 00:07:24)

This "rediscovered gem" is most likely the first video we ever created. The openning sequence is pretty true to life: "oh no, it's almost Mom's birthday and we don't have a present."

This set the format we would return to for other movies: short segments ending with a slide-show retrospective. We appologize in advance for the plethora of transition styles. We were playing around with all of the options of a small program called Showbiz and got more than a little carried away.

The reason this got lost was because it is so old that I hadn't worked out how to print covers for DVD cases yet. Therefore, this one got put in a CD jewel case and seems destined to spend its days misfilled with the music instead of hanging out with the rest of the movies.

Return to the WideWaterFilms Homepage.


Sacajawea Presentation (4.68MB, 00:02:02)
		Natalie has the same wonderful 3rd-Grade teacher that Amelia had. The best part for me is that I now have copies of the oral presentations for both girls. Sit back, relax, and enjoy Natalie telling you all about Sacajawea.
Valentine's Day 2009 (9.16MB, 00:04:07)
		We're back to the music videos (sort of) I just couldn't pass up singing this song and doing a retrospective of life with my girls. I don't know if they'll really appreciate it now... but they will someday. Until then, you can see it here (in slightly better than normal quality).
Burt's 49th Birthday Celebration (3.9MB, 00:08:56)
		Suprise!. Our friend Burt was turning 49 and his wife wanted a slideshow of him, his friends, and his family. I suggested we have "greetings" from people on it. Rather than have people record their voice, deliver it to me, and then deal with tapes, CDs or lord knows what... I found a free service offered by K7.net where they give you a voice-mail box that emails you WAV files of the messages left there. Perfect. People could do it from their home phone (a piece of tech that most people can figure out) and I get a computer-ready file. I was desperate for a "unifying theme" until I found a newsreel of the opening of the "First Private Atom Power Plant" that happened just two days after Burt was born.
Daisy Days (8.3MB, 00:19:28)
		My "little hobby" is taking on a life of its own. I'm hearing more and more often "oh, Eric can make a DVD for that." I'm not complaining; it's fun and, since I'm doing it for things I like and not charging money, there isn't (much) stress. This project was a "year in review" slideshow for Natalie's Daisy Girl Scout Troop. Tons of pictures, beautiful music, and the girls' own voices. Fun Fact: I know most of the people who's music I used. Tim Heintz (second song) went to high-school with my sister and used to play the organ at our church, Catherine McDonald (third song) is one of the music teachers at my daughter's school, and William Cushman (last song) is a cool dude who posts great music on his blog.
Amelia Earhart Presentation (1.8MB, 00:04:02)
		Amelia had a great 3rd Grade teacher who had the kids doing all sorts of interesting things. One of their projects was to research a historical figure and then give an oral presentation as though they were that person. Pretty nifty. When we got the note reminding us that the kids had to bring their props on the day assigned because he had a lot of kids to videotape and not a lot of time for "make up" presentations... I got an idea that sounded good at the time. I offered to take the videos and make a DVD out of them. It was certainly fun working with DV-captured material. But, I didn't take into account the fact that he was borrowing a camera that needed serious cleaning and that he wasn't too comfortable using. Four of the kids had to give their presentations multiple times because I'd get the tape and there would be "issues." On the plus side, one kid had deaf parents and I wanted them to be able to "hear" his presentation so I learned how to do subtitles. I also learned how use playlists and make spiffy menu transitions in DVD-Lab.
A Heart-Felt Holiday (9.89MB, 00:22:09)
		Progress marches on. Some of us ride floats in the parade as we feel ourselves being drawn to a "bright new future.." While others of us sit on the curb with a bag of snacks and wave as the parade goes by. I'm not too sure which group I fit in yet. Our 2005 Holiday DVD turned out a little odd. I shot the openning scene "on a whim" using my Kodak digital still-camera while we were in Hawaii. I was planning on a whole "island theme" production. Then I got the idea of having the girls ask an animated stick-man about Santa. After spending a whole day messing around with the animation software; I knew it would take too long and I had to go to Plan B. Of course, I didn't have a Plan B. It was then that the girls and I seized on the idea of using puppets. It worked well. So we1l that I used then in any scene that I could.
A Moment with SuperBaby (1MB, 00:02:16)
		This is an odd little piece. It's a modern "Kodak Moment." We were visiting my parents' house on Halloween (2004) and teasing our new cousin, Lucian, with a laser pointer. He was following it around on the floor and just being darn cute. During the episode, someone commented what a shame it was that we didn't have a video camera. Well... my Kodak CX7430 digital still-camera has a video mode and a 1GB SD card. It certainly isn't anywhere near the quality of a "real" video camera, but I captured this little moment and was able to give my sister a reasonably watchable DVD the next time we saw her.
WideWaterFilms Leader (548KB, 00:00:13)
		This is the "leader" film that I put at the beginning of all my DVDs. The text ripples due to the "warp" plugin from RosaNegra I've replaced the original (and completely unoriginal) text logo with a fancy new one created by the wonderful and creative people at Harris Graphic Services.
Music Video (1.46MB, 00:03:16)
		The girls wanted to make a movie as a Valentine's Day present. Here they are singing "Accidently in Love." I used the "Old Film" effect in EditStudio for the flashback segments. One of my kids asked "why does it look funny?" I forgot they've been raised in the Age-of-DVDs and have never seen bad black-and-white film.
Wedding Video (3.62MB 00:08:01)
		No, I wasn't at my parents' wedding back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. But I did digitize the deteriorating VHS of the deteriorating super-8 film. And, It's just fun to look at.
The Truth About Horses (1.65MB 00:03:41)
		This was a surprise. The girls worked out a story and created backgrounds. Then, they asked if I could film them and turn it into a movie. I guess they caught the "movie bug" also. The background music is "Thursday Afternoon" from Bill Cushman's Ghost Notes
Christmas DVD motion menu (5.4MB 00:00:57)
		We are so proud of this we just had to put it on-line. This is the motion menu for the "Bug & Nat's Christmas 2004" DVD. Some have claimed (and they may be right) that it is better than the movie it leads to. Only the first minute is shown here. We wanted to encode it at a higher quality than normal.
Bug & Nat's Christmas 2004 (7.9MB 00:17:53)
		This has everything; special effects, music, interviews, bad ballet, and a killer slide-show. It is rumored that Warner Brothers moved up the release date of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" so as not to compete. We have been unable to confirm that.
Santa Babies (5.3MB 00:12:09)
		This one holds a special place in my heart. It was our first "serious" project (done under our old name of StormCo Filmitoque). The girls were finally old enough to take direction and Amelia did a wonderful job with the opening narration. Watch the credits for some cute bloopers. The video is a little jumpy because we still hadn't figured out that we were suffering from a bad case of field-order-reversal.
Birthday Present 2003 (9.7MB 00:07:24)
		This "rediscovered gem" is most likely the first video we ever created. The openning sequence is pretty true to life: "oh no, it's almost Mom's birthday and we don't have a present." This set the format we would return to for other movies: short segments ending with a slide-show retrospective. We appologize in advance for the plethora of transition styles. We were playing around with all of the options of a small program called Showbiz and got more than a little carried away. The reason this got lost was because it is so old that I hadn't worked out how to print covers for DVD cases yet. Therefore, this one got put in a CD jewel case and seems destined to spend its days misfilled with the music instead of hanging out with the rest of the movies.