Not too many people today personally experienced the Great Depression, but curiosity about the period remains strong, particularly as our current economic situation seems similarly perilous. Even so, when professional director and cinematographer Christopher Cannucciari began posting short videos of his grandmother's depression-era recipes and experiences on YouTube, he wasn't quite prepared for the surge of interest a woman past the age of 90 sharing her life story would generate.
The idea for the videos caught hold with Christopher about two years ago, before the current recession began. "I wanted to capture these stories my grandmother would tell and the recipes she still talked about," Christopher says. "We wrote the recipes down, but it's never quite the same way as your grandparents actually make it. They might say it takes 3 eggs, and it's actually 4 eggs, so it never comes out the same. I figured that if I filmed the cooking, I could get these recipes down definitively.
"I also wanted to capture her stories. I put the stories and recipes together and posted them on the internet. She had some fans early on, but it wasn't until recently that it just totally exploded –especially with the downturn in the economy."
Clara Cannucciari, now 93, grew up in Melrose Park, a Chicago neighborhood where her Sicilian-American family and friends confronted and overcame the unique hardships of The Great Depression. Her cooking show, seasoned with these recollections of everyday life from that period, captured interest across the country. When YouTube counters topped the one-million-view mark, Christopher realized that the story was resonating with a large and growing audience, and he decided to share the stories by means of another medium: DVD.
"This project just hit everybody in the right spot," Christopher said. "It is uplifting, it is funny, and it is frank and realistic. Plus, you get to learn a recipe."
The DVD project: By popular demand
Christopher launched the project after getting a number of requests from YouTube viewers. "A large part of my current audience is 40- to 60-year-old women. Some of those women would write in and say, ‘I love the episodes. I'd like to show my grandmother, but she doesn't have a computer. Would you consider making a DVD?' I got enough of those requests that I finally said, ‘OK, I should probably make a DVD of this.' So, this past winter I put it all together and added some special features, and that is how the DVD got started."
Christopher shot three episodes of the cooking show initially in 2007, and then recently shot another seven, using his grandmother's kitchen at her home in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York as a set. Because Christopher made the journey by bus from his home in Brooklyn, he originally kept the gear simple – a single photo flood lamp and a mini-DV camcorder. As the show's popularity grew and Christopher began thinking ahead to other uses of the video, he began shooting in Hi-Def with another camcorder.
"I was shooting mini-DV, for the first three segments," he explains. "Then, I started shooting Hi-Def. I thought I should bump up the quality in case we did a DVD, or if YouTube ever got better quality – which they actually did.
"Before I finished the DVD, I went back and filmed three more episodes with her – some behind-the-scenes stuff. We wrapped those up and put them all on the DVD. Since the DVD project was completed, the interest continues to grow. We're now talking about doing an actual cookbook with a publisher."
The simple and straightforward approach to the videography worked well – more so, in fact, than a full-blown professional camera setup. Christopher explains, "CBS Evening News came to do an interview with her. And, they brought up big cameras and big lights and she clammed right up, because she got nervous. When it is more intimate – with just the one camera and the one little light – it works great."
Nuts and bolts: DVD production
Christopher enlisted the services of his wife, Abby Cope, a professional photographer, for packaging layout and disc image photographs. He also worked with an editor, Alison Shurman, with whom he had done a previous documentary. "Alison helped me master the DVD. I had a pretty good idea of how I wanted to do it, and she was able to execute the mastering process very smoothly, I thought."
Video editing was done in Apple Final Cut Pro and mastering in DVD Studio Pro. With a DVD master and packaging layout in hand, Christopher was able to hand over everything that Disc Makers needed to begin printing and replicating. The initial run was 1,500 discs.
"For me," Christopher said, "it was extremely important to have everything come out the way I had it designed. Being so involved with that process, you are naturally anxious to see it. Are the colors going to be right? Is the layout going to be right? Disc Makers nailed it. It was a great experience for me."
The DVD package
Christopher chose a six-panel DVD package with the inside panels used to capture the unique character of the cooking show.
"I really wanted the disc to reflect the style and the feel of the show and the audience," Christopher notes. "I wanted for it to show up in someone's living room and for them to be proud to own it. I didn't want a clamshell plastic disc. I wanted something to unfold – so I got the six panel. That was very important to me: to have someone take it and open it up and see that this was more than just your average disc. I think we really achieved the effect we wanted."
Christopher opted for self-distribution, to see how effective it might be for reaching the audience. "I set up a PayPal account through our website. I wanted to experiment with self distribution," Christopher said, "because I've always been curious to see how that might work. Some distributors take as much as 50 to 60 percent of the revenues. I was hoping to do it in a way where I could keep most of the revenue."
Sales have been steadily ramping up and Christopher is beginning to see interest from a number of different quarters. "There has been a lot of interest from libraries actually," he said. "They want to get it because it has historical value."
Stories on a personal level
Part of the charm of the series comes from the insights Clara shares with the audience, whether she is relating stories of relatives in the family photo album or adding a small detail that captures some of the flavor of everyday life during the Great Depression.
Some of the stories related in the episodes are completely unique to Chicago and the depression era. "She told a story on one of her videos about bootleggers back in the prohibition days," Christopher recounts. "In her neighborhood there were gangsters and they would come door to door and ask, ‘Do you want to distill whiskey in your shed?' If someone didn't have a shed, they would build one for them. Her parents said no, they didn't want to get involved, but all of a sudden these big sheds started popping up everywhere in the neighborhood, some of them bigger than the houses.
"She said you could smell the whiskey everywhere, and then when the gig was up, the gangsters came around with hatchets and broke all the casks of whiskey. As she tells it, you could literally walk through the streets and you would be walking through whiskey, pouring through the neighborhood.
"Her story reaches people in a personal way," Christopher concludes. "She is like a surrogate grandmother for a lot of people. If you had a grandmother like her, you can identify right away. Or, if you didn't have a grandmother when you were growing up, you could wish she was yours."
Not too many people today personally experienced the Great Depression, but curiosity about the period remains strong, particularly as our current economic situation seems similarly perilous. Even so, when professional director and cinematographer Christopher Cannucciari began posting short videos of his grandmother's depression-era recipes and experiences on YouTube, he wasn't quite prepared for the surge of interest a woman past the age of 90 sharing her life story would generate.
Clara Cannucciari, now 93, grew up in Melrose Park, a Chicago neighborhood where her Sicilian-American family and friends confronted and overcame the unique hardships of The Great Depression. Her cooking show, seasoned with these recollections of everyday life from that period, captured interest across the country. When YouTube counters topped the one-million-view mark, Christopher realized that the story was resonating with a large and growing audience, and he decided to share the stories by means of another medium: DVD. 
The DVD package
