Yesterday This Was Home: Diving off into the Sunset

As Sam recalled feeling relieved and vindicated he also remembered still feeling scared because he didn’t know what might happen for the rest of the bus ride through the south.

This scene was a challenge to animate in Adobe Premiere Pro. I had the bus level and the background and figured it would be easy to simply reduce the size of the bus to animate it as it drove away. I had to adjust the scale and position of the but on the X and Y axis. When I first did it the bus was skidding all over the road and I adjusted the three perimeters. I wanted the bus to start at speed and then decelerate as it was further away.

I struggled four quite some time to try and get the three settings to work in sync, but the bus kept swerving all over the road. I finally realized I could move the center point of the bus image to the spot where I wanted the bus to be smallest. When I did that everything fell into place. It was an easy shot to accomplish once I figured out that key element. With the dialogue overlayed and the sound of the bus diving off the shot came alive.

This film is now on display at the Orange County Regional History Center (65 East Central Blvd Orlando FL) for the new exhibition, Yesterday This Was Home, about the 1920 Ocoee Voting Day Massacre. The exhibition is open until February 14, 2021. The 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history.

Events unfolded on Election Day 1920, when Mose Norman, a black U.S. citizen, attempted to exercise his legal right to vote in Ocoee and was turned away from the polls. That evening, a mob of armed white men came to the home of his friend, July Perry, in an effort to locate Norman. Shooting ensued. Perry was captured and eventually lynched. An unknown number of African American citizens were murdered, and their homes and community were burned to the ground. Most of the black population of Ocoee fled, never to return.

This landmark exhibition will mark the 100-year remembrance of the Ocoee Massacre. The exhibition will explore not only this horrific time in our community’s history but also historical and recent incidents of racism, hatred, and terror, some right here at home.

The content will encourage reflection on a century of social transformation, the power of perspective, and the importance of exercising the right to vote, and will ask what lessons history can inspire moving forward.

To promote safe distancing, the museum has implemented new ticketing procedures for this special exhibition. For the run of the exhibition, the museum will have extended operating hours to create a safe viewing experience for a greater number of people. On Sundays the museum will open two hours earlier at 10 am. and stay open two hours earlier until 7 p.m. And on Thursdays, we will be open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.