New Toys

In 1989, the O’Donnell’s purchased a new VHS Camcorder.

While creating a memorial video for the late great Uncle Billy, I archived a bunch of old VHS footage. The footage covered roughly a two year period from late 1989 through 1990, with exceptions. After completing the memorial video, I had a source timeline with several hours of footage, which I continued to narrow down to vignettes focused on character, and juxtaposing moments.

There were several themes living within footage, nostalgia aside, that asked to be a short film. This included the difference in how people interacted with the camera in the pre-social media generations, the importance of the dining room table, music, etc. A holiday is where I was able to group the most of these together, so this VHS footage quickly became a Christmas Movie, with the camera living as a dominant character.

One day, in 1988 or ‘89, Uncle Chuck showed up at the house with a VHS Camcorder. There were no selfies or duck faces. There was just a sense of amazement that the camera could take your image and put it on a television. I was still getting used to the idea that the VHS player could record a show that we could then watch later, at a time other than when the program was aired. It seems like this concept should not have been that big of a stretch, considering it was not too uncommon to shoot footage on an 8mm camera and then project it onto a sheet in the living room. But, with that, you could at least see the mechanics of the projection and understand how it worked.

It wasn’t long before we had our own, and everyone wanted to be the camera operator, while everyone else wanted the camera to be put away.