Make A Video This Week

As part of a family remembrance of my parents on Sunday, we watched a videotape we'd made in 2004, in which we interviewed them, documentary style, and asked them about God, about their parents, about what made them happy, about what made for a good marriage, their opinion of children, their sense of humor. I had noticed years before that most home video shows people in the distance, in sidelong glances, doing something else. Candid video is fine (and there was no sound back in the 8mm film era), but I often watched old films and videos and wished I could clearly hear the person, or know what they were thinking. In my family, we did interviews with my parents and our children when they were younger, and there is a tape our children made of us eight years ago. It is both painful and poginant to have a video like this; make it this week! (A tip: if you really want to be able to hear someone, make sure they are VERY close to the camera. An alternative is to "mic" them, which is what I do, as a former soundman, but almost no home video recorders have audio inputs. I have to buy mine on the Internet).