Home Movies

We have a large collection of VHS home movie tapes from the eighties shot with a video camera approximately the size of a professional news crews’ equipment. The tapes have been in a box in the garage for years until this past Saturday night when my husband brought them in for the family to watch.

We only made it through two of the tapes, one of a vacation to the Grand Canyon and another of a trip to the coast with my parents and siblings. I discovered I filmed more scenery than people, hours and hours of scenery. I wish I knew then what I know now – I don’t care about the majestic vistas of the Grand Canyon or the crashing ocean surf, I want to see people. Upon watching the videos I yelled at myself, the camera operator, to turn the lens toward my daughters. I wanted to see more of them at the places where we stopped en route to Arizona. I want more film footage of them at Flintstone World and at the cliff dwellings in Walnut Canyon. Apparently I thought I was filming a documentary on Fred, Wilma, Betty and Barney in their prehistoric cartoon world.

As much as I missed seeing more of the children on the video, I wonder what I really missed at the time. While I was behind the camera filming the scenery what were they doing that I didn’t get to enjoy? All I have are fleeting shots of Daughter #2 running through each scene (she never stopped running on that entire 1000 mile trip) and Daughter #1, an almost teenager, asking me to hold her purse while she chased after her little sister. The on-screen time my children got is disproportionate to the time I spent filming the “stuff” – the stuff that won’t make the final edit.

I plan to edit the videos and transfer the final cut to DVDs (or whatever format is in vogue when I finally finish this Herculean task). I am looking forward to watching each tape and judiciously axing all of the superfluous footage of mountains and canyons and oceans while keeping the precious shots of my daughters and my other family members.

Watching the beach trip video my daughters were rapt, looking for a shot of their beloved MaMa, who died almost twenty years ago. The few clips of her are treasures. Why, oh why, did I not film her more?

The moral of this story – take lots of photos/videos of people, not stuff.