They didn’t walk the red carpet. Nor did they hobnob with celebrities. But they still took home golden statuettes awarded by their peers for their work in motion pictures.

They were the winners of the Laguna Woods Video Club’s 14th annual Goldie Awards, voted the top three short videos by fellow club members at their annual banquet in February in Clubhouse 7.

Lucy Parker took the top award for her philosophical and artistic piece titled “About Time – A Senior Meditation.” Second prize went to Tom Nash for his humorous take on “Found Treasures,” and Katharine Holland won third place for her exploration of true devotion in “Two Loves, Five Questions.”

The competition offered 10 club members’ video productions of under four minutes each for judging by the general membership. Criteria included content (story, creativity and originality), technical quality, and special factors such as emotional response, enjoyment and deeper meaning.

“Video is everywhere,” club President Jonathan Williams said in his introductory remarks. He referred to all of the club’s video makers as “stars.”

The 10 competing videos were shown in one presentation lasting just under 40 minutes. Subject matter ran the gamut from travel tales to history, from light-hearted looks at local life to philosophical meditations with deeper meaning.

First up was “Celebrating the Journey of Taro Okamoto,” by Suzanne Savlov. It tells the story of her reunion with her Japanese exchange student 34 years later during her visit to Japan. The former student takes her on outings to Sendai, Nara and Tokyo, along with a virtual reality experience and meals at a variety of local restaurants.

Second to be shown was Parker’s winning meditation on time, which she put together on her computer from free offerings available on the internet. It featured meditative segments, pithy quotations and a variety of artistic images.

“I’ve always been fascinated by time,” said Parker, who serves as the club’s webmaster. “It’s a theme that’s important to me, especially since I have a history of being late,” she added with a laugh.

“Time is so central to our lives, especially as we get older,” she said.

Parker had submitted an earlier version of her video a few years ago, but it wasn’t accepted for the competition. Since then, she edited and focused the production, with some professional critiques from her children.

When she came to the Village more than a decade ago, she was mainly concerned with the print medium.

“I learned everything I know about video here in the club,” she said, attributing much of her knowledge to club instructor Nash.

The third video to be shown was the third place winner, an interview with two loving couples living in the Village. They individually answer questions about how they met, what they enjoy most about each other and what their last words to each other would be.

Holland made the video on her iPhone 14 Pro Max around Valentine’s Day.

“I just wanted to ask two couples I knew how they met and have them make a few short and snappy remarks,” Holland said. “It turned out different than I expected, with longer sound bites that drew people into the story more.” And unexpected humor came out as well with the unscripted remarks, she said.

The fourth video, “Enjoying a Taste of New Orleans,” by Marsha Berman, offered a travelogue through that Southern city, featuring a swamp tour, a visit to Preservation Hall, a stroll up Bourbon Street and a ghost tour.

“An Ethnographic Tour of Transylvania,” by Williams, the club president, was shown next, featuring villagers hosting visitors with food, cultural dancing and the playing of traditional long horns.

One of the more serious subjects to be dealt with in the videos was war, explored in “Two Gama Stories in Okinawa,” by Eric Kuramoto. It dealt in a moving way with the citizens of Japanese Okinawa who feared the American soldiers who captured their island during World War II. Members of one group committed suicide in fear while members of another surrendered and were given safe passage by their American captors.

Switching gears abruptly to the light-hearted subject of dumpster diving, the second place winner by vice president Nash, came next. It focused on discarded items found in or near the Village dumpsters that were rejuvenated and restored to life in his own and friends’ homes in the Village.

Nash came up with the idea while looking at the recycled chandelier in his own home and branched out to pieces of furniture and rugs that are enjoying a second life nearby.

He shot the piece with a video camera and edited it at home. As video studio manager, he regularly teaches video editing, a holdover from his decades of teaching video production at Biola University.

“Luxor Balloon Adventure,” by Fran Conroy, was the eighth video shown, featuring a hot air balloon view of the landscape surrounding the ancient city along the Nile.

The next-to-last feature focused on the breathtaking surgical transformations performed by orthopedic surgeon and Village resident James Lau on Yazidi refugees. Lau made the video himself, following the case of a man with deformed legs who escaped the claws of ISIS only to live in a refugee camp in Iraq. Lau and his team of volunteers operate on the man, enabling him to be fitted with prosthetic legs and begin to walk again. The moving narrative is titled “Transformed – Let Me Walk.”

The final video, titled “Memories to Keep – Venice,” by Eli Silberger, presented colorful scenes from that Italian treasure of a city, with the building of a three-dimensional image from a photo demonstrated at the end.

The video presentations wrapped with the image of a kitty purring, perhaps an homage to the MGM lion roaring at the end of many movies.

Each club member attending the banquet, catered by the 19 Restaurant, cast three ballots after the presentation. While they enjoyed dessert, votes were counted and the winners announced.

Williams reiterated the fact that everyone has a story.

“We should celebrate and share our life stories,” he said.

He encouraged people to come to the Video Lab, behind Clubhouse 2, on Tuesdays, when he is there to discuss their stories with him.

Head lab supervisor Jim Rohrs, attending the banquet, told his tablemates about the many services performed at the lab. “We have the equipment to turn old analog videos into MP3 files and can digitize people’s old photo albums,” he said,

He views the new AI capabilities as a great help to the job of editing as well and has seen the quality of video submissions improve in the last few years.

New club member Carol Moore, attending the video competition for the first time, found the videos to be “outstanding with wonderful photography.”

She said she was impressed with the creativity and originality of the treatments and subject matter.

“They were well done, thought-provoking and inspirational,” she said.

Again encouraging members to mine their own lives for video material, Williams said, “We all have stories to tell. If it means something to you, it will mean something to somebody else.”