I recently made a video that was intended to just be a series of photos, a slide show to music to be played at a family gathering. A dedication to the one and only Uncle Billy. Going through the old family photos, however, was the beginning of many days of indulging in nostalgia, which is where I am now. Boxes of photos. Rooting through my parent’s attic. Digging. Re-examining. Reminiscing. Remembering.
Thinking how the footage from all the VHS tapes in the box would fit on a Micro SD Card at twice the resolution.
In my digging I found a box of VHS tapes. Large. Bulky. Fragile. They were our home videos from the 1980s and 1990s, and some even later (although it seems odd that someone would be walking around with one of those awkwardly oversized cameras in the early 2000s. I remember the events, but I don’t remember anyone, including myself, wielding one of these cameras that late in our family mythos.)
This is not the first time I have found these VHS tapes. They pop up every few years. Each time I find them I plan on watching them and converting them to digital files. But - Instead I would smile, reminiscing, and then move past the box to complete the task at hand. Converting the tapes would be time consuming, and better reserved for the distant future.
But - for the slide show to music that I was tasked with - there was likely some footage on these tapes that would be perfect for this particular project, and I was already deep in that nostalgic trance. If I didn’t convert them now, it would be unlikely that I ever would.
A stand alone clip from one of the tapes
I found the VCR in a closet, and tried to figure out how to hook up the VCR to the computer (a VCR does not hook up directly to a computer.) When shaking and cursing at the VCR didn’t get any images to pop up, I defaulted to watching a few Youtube tutorials.
A trip to three stores, (excluding the details as we all know how shopping goes,) and I purchased the VHS to DVD converter (software and cables,) a hard drive, and then later more conversion software (first was for VHS to MPG files, then MPG to .mov.) *Expletives here* For some reason the VHS to DVD converter converts the VHS footage to a type of digital footage that you can’t use, and needs to be converted a second time.
After the first six hours of screening and converting, there was a treasure trove of footage (treasure for a small audience, granted.) Watching this footage became a distraction to the work at hand, but a happy set back, both emotionally and educationally.
Uncle Billy 1989
Watching the old movies revealed a few things. One is that we get old. But secondly, over time we become different people. Different things become important. Our view of the world narrows. Many things that were important fall to the wayside, victims of our slowly forming tunnel vision. Visiting the past in this way allows one to reassess what was thrown overboard in juxtaposition to currently fills our heads and leads our days.
In my personal experience, one of the big things that was filtered out of relevance was the dining room table. Scrolling through this dated footage, there was an event centered around the dining room table every few weeks. Lots of coffee, lots of cakes, lots of guests, and lots of music. Company or not, event or not, it was a given that everyone ate together on a Sunday. Many hours were spent around the table, and if there was company, it was not uncommon that it would last until the sun came out. I know I like to indulge in conversation, and I know I like to write music into all my scripts and fiction. Watching these videos makes it clear that the dining room table was a large contributing factor.
Of course, I should have been editing, not unravelling the cause and effects, and subconscious pushes in my life.
John O’Donnell with the guitar at the head of the table
But - there was so much footage. And beyond the personal revelations, forgotten characters, and conversations with ghosts, there is so much free production design. The haircuts, wardrobe, TVs, pictures on the wall, cheap wood panelling, kitchen appliances, all unaffordable now if I wanted to do a 1980’s period piece (and soon I will be doing a 1980’s period piece with the web series “Pieces: Out of the Dark,” but that is for a different post.)
I gathered footage and photos until the night before the wake, and assembled all the relevant memories into a timeline until five thirty in the morning. The easiest project that I ever spent that much time with.
With the Uncle Billy Memorial Video complete, it has been back to indulging in these videos, trying to figure out what to do with them. Some are fun goofy sequences - which I am sure will evolve into a web series, but I would like to craft something from the footage that does justice to the idea of the Dining Room Table - even if it is a background theme. That being said - on top of the pile of other projects, I will be slowly whittling down on a timeline with this in mind.