Larry Nimmer was working diligently at The Lucky Llama in Carpinteria last weekend when former Vice President Al Gore escorted his daughter across the lawn located just in front of the coffee shop.
Sarah Gore and her fiancé, Patrick Maiani, then wed under a historic Torrey pine tree, an unconventional wedding spot for a former vice-president’s daughter.
“I go [to the Lucky Llama] most mornings, and I just happened to be there,” Nimmer said.
Nimmer has been a filmmaker and TV producer for more than 40 years. His clients have ranged from Michael Jackson to CBS News to Carl’s Jr.
So naturally, as the Gore family passed in front of him, he quickly got up and filmed the exclusive wedding, which relocated down the hill to Crushcakes and Café after the ceremony came to an end.
In addition to working with many prestigious clients, Nimmer has done projects for many public agencies, including the state of California, and has served on the Santa Barbara County Library Advisory Board.
However, he currently dedicates his time to a new project, Everyone Has a Story.
Everyone Has a Story is a new free program that archives video stories from everyday people.
The project encourages people to use new technologies to film their experiences and archives them online. Videos can range from family memories to professional experiences to local and world events.
The Gore wedding footage has been useful publicity for the project, Nimmer said.
The video footage can be found on the Everyone Has a Story YouTube page and has since been played on CNN among other networks.
Nimmer’s personal mission statement is “to give people a platform to express themselves” by sharing video stories with the world.
He started the project about two months ago, and is asking that people interested in sharing their videos send him a link. He will then upload the video to the Everyone Has a Story web page and the Everyone Has a Story YouTube account.
“The project is relatively new,” he said. “I hope that people in the future will be able to upload it directly to the web site. For now, they can send me a link, and I will upload [the video].”
Nimmer hopes the project will expand much further and become a public archive.
“Our hope is that this becomes a big deal, and that we get various public libraries involved,” he said.
To learn more about Everyone Has a Story, contact Nimmer at nimmer@everyonehasastory.org.
— Noozhawk intern Allyson Werner can be reached at awerner@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.