Kim J. Harmon

It started as a way to preserve some family memories, but it quickly blossomed into something so much more.

About a year and a half ago, Judy Curran of Newtown discovered some old family film which featured six family members who had recently passed. Along with her identical twin sister, Jenny Manning of Southlake, Texas, they put together what they had and found themselves with 90 minutes of the kind of boring home movies that are gathering dust in basements and attics all over the world.

But once they started editing, the two sisters soon found themselves with 20 minutes of clips that were pure gold.

And with Natalie Cole singing “Unforgettable,” it was perfect.

Soon after that, Pearls2Video was born. Much like they did for themselves and their families, they began spending their time – using what they already knew about photography and graphics and teaching themselves video on the fly – creating treasured keepsakes of weddings, anniversaries and Sweet 16 birthday parties for families in Texas, Connecticut and New York.

“It just exploded,” said Curran, “and it’s still exploding.”

But it’s more than family milestones Curran and Manning are capturing. So much of what they do takes place on the baseball diamond, the soccer pitch, the lacrosse or field hockey field, and the basketball court. Curran has become a fixture at games at Newtown High School and John Jay High School in Cross River, New York.

Team highlight videos, recruiting videos – memories.

“It was a natural progression,” said Curran, who not only played basketball but was a record-breaking track and field athlete in high school. “When I think of the time of my life that I wish to pass on it’s the time spent with my teams. There is nothing like that team bonding.”

This past fall, she completed the highlight video for the Hendrick Hudson High School volleyball team in Montrose, New York, and along with footage of the New York State Championship game in Albany she also captured the police, ambulance and fire truck escort the team received on its way home.

Priceless stuff.

“Team highlights are more about individual members and how they bond together as a team,” said Curran. “You get to know people and you find that each individual brings some unique and interesting aspect to the team. One of the things that also comes to me after talking to the kids is that they may never have this kind of fan base again. These are their glory years and we want to capture that for them.”

Curran has done the highlight video for the Newtown High School baseball and boys’ soccer teams and, locally, has done recruiting videos for Kristi Nowak (on her way to Virginia Teach), Tara Gaston (now at Gettysburg College) and Alex Konneker (now at Manhattan College). She has also done a promotional video for snowboarder Sean Ryan.

What she did for Gaston and Konneker was even more than a recruit video. She followed them for a year, capturing images of them in action on the soccer field, at graduation and at the prom and included shots of Newtown and scenes with their friends.

“They will be able to pull this out years later,” she said. “These moments are moments in time you can capture and put in a format where you won’t stick it on a shelf to gather dust.”

Pearls2Video has become more than a home-based business for Curran, too. Spending so much time on the sidelines, talking with kids and watching them through the lens of her camera she has found herself becoming connected.

“I find myself getting emotionally involved with the kids,” she admitted. “I’m catching things they don’t know I’m catching and it’s so cool because I really get to know these kids. It’s so much fun for me and I’m so thrilled to be able to capture these moments.”

As much as she loves what she does, it does provide her with a rigorous schedule – about 14 hours a day filming and editing with Final Cut Pro on her MAC G4 (and imagine how time consuming it was back when she was using a PC with a Windows© based program). And with every moment she spends on the field or at her computer, she learns something new.

“I’ll always be learning,” said Curran, who works closely with her sister through high-speed internet connections and headphones in their virtual office. “Whenever you talk about creativity, it keeps getting more and more complex.”

Visit Pearls2Video at www.pearls2video.com and view samples of their work.