Saving the past by commenting on old films and videos…
It will be another year before I can do what I just missed out on. Back in the ’80′s, I converted my father’s 8mm films to video with my older brother’s VHS camcorder. I rented an 8mm projector and a screen. I shot the screen and ended up with two hours of video.
I finally converted the VHS tape to DVD and brought one to the beach house where we gathered for a week this year. Being in the business, I should have anticipated all the comments the siblings would make when they would see each other, and themselves, on the tube. What I would have done is videotaped everyone as they watched the video. Then, I’d take the footage and assemble the audio track and burn a final DVD to give to everyone.
Do you see what I’m doing? You can apply this to photos in an album…you’ll miss the stories if you don’t have your parents sit down and flip through those pages. Yes, it can be embarassing, but that short time of embarassment is less painful than the thought of never having your mother adding color to a photo of you in the backyard or riding your first bike!
My mother has a collage that is quickly fading away. I want to photograph the collage, sit my mother down and have her go through each photo and tell the story behind each of them. My father past away a few years ago, so I lost his perspective which is HUGE! Now, I have my mother left to tell the stories, and these photos are her collection.
With today’s high megapixel cameras, you can easily get very good quality of photos without the trouble of getting in tight and lighting it properly.
So, get out there and do it before you lose the opportunity. Think of it as the equivalent of not keeping those recipes that Mom or Grandma had, and no one made the effort to learn those or kept them!!!
I hope we are each around next year. That’s my next opportunity, and when it is done, no matter the production quality, it will be something to cherish as it is our connection to our past…long time ago.
