Day 11: grief journaling – Write about your loved one’s legacy.

A legacy is the story of some ones life, the things they did, places they went, goals they accomplished, their failures, and more. Legacy is something that a person leaves behind to be remembered. I guess you could call Jacob’s YouTube channel his legacy to all of us left to walk this earth without him with us and to future generations to come. By watching his creative and funny little movies we get a sense of who he was, his warped sense of humour, how clever he was with technology and witness his creative talent in action.

He created his legacy by using his beloved camera. The very camera I’m using now to capturing the world through his eyes (although I’ve never used it on the video mode and wouldn’t know how) bought second hand and still going strong. Over the years as his interest grew in cinematography he bought and made his own equipment to enhance his visual story telling. He’d gather his cousin and friends to unlock the script before bringing it to life with dialogue and action scenes. Horror, drama, suspense and humour seemed to be his ‘go to’ genre of movie to be produced. He learnt this talent in the course he did at TAFE and on the job training working on the set of the many productions being filmed with Jacob working his magic behind the camera.

Jacob had lots of movies on his list as his favourites, he didn’t just have one. These are worthy of a mention (not in any particular order) – the lord of the rings, the hobbit, interstellar, the secret life of Walter Mitty, Super 8 (just like he was as a kid wanting to make that no 1 blockbuster), King Kong (the one with Jack Black starring in it), Blended with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, the music man (when he was young) but that feel good, easy going one to watch was The Producers with quite a worthy title given his career aspiration. I’m sure there are many more that I haven’t touched on that were on his long list of ‘what to watch.’ He loved lots of tv shows too which probably gave him ideas to use in his movies – supernatural, how I met your mother, two and a half men, the Simpson’s, and Big Bang theory.

We’d all do our bit to help him film, particularly when he made them at home. We held things up like lights, threw balls etc and even filled in as an extra or voice over. We knew he was busy when his laptop was open, the occasionally swear words would slip out as his computer froze right at a crucial moment he was editing. It was heartbreaking when he fried the hard drive of his laptop during his last creation. We still have several of those scenes saved and unfinished. It would have been a good one too with lots of suspense. A young man running for his life through the thick bush, tripping over tree roots lessoning the distance between the innocent victim and chaser (although you never saw them, you just knew they were closing in on them from the music and the look on the guys face as he was running). Water running through an abandoned dark tunnel under a road suddenly is streaked with a blood like substance. A scared girl in a locked car that won’t start in an isolated car park with a person dressed in dark clothing with a hoody coming closer to her side window holding up a weapon causing her to scream. In the next clip you see the other side of the story to the previous one, watching the person dressed in dark clothes and a hoodie running to the car only to be holding up a car jack as he comes asking for help with his broken down car, he wasn’t going to harm her at all, just asking for assistance.

Jacob’s love of making movies started young at around 10yrs. He’d make them in the back yard with a mate, mainly a zombie horror story with fake blood made from red paint and tomato sauce. I’m sure had he had more time on earth to pursue his career in cinematography he would have made himself a name in the industry. He’d make sure the credits spelt his name correctly, as he’d get a little bit upset to see that his contributions to his feature works hadn’t got it right…and just as the saying goes ‘I before E, except after C’ this was the same as his surname. He will be with us for a lifetime with his work on YouTube to tap into a bit of his creativity when we feel like it.

‘The goal isn’t to live forever but to create something that will’ and Jacob with his cousin and mates did just that – JDscreens and CobbyFilms. 

Jacob’s first take in cinematography (although he starred as the zombie) he directed and wrote the script….an occasional swear word can be heard, apologies. 

Jacob & his cousin Luke – film noir