No Experience Is Ever Wasted

I don't remember when we got our first movie camera. I was always jealous of Walt's family because they had movies of his growing up years -- all those hula festivals in Hawaii -- and we never did. We couldn't afford something as expensive as a movie camera. We had photos, but it would have been fun to have movies.

I don't remember if Walt and I got our first movie camera before or after Jeri was born. But we did have it for her first months of life (nothing more exciting than a movie of a newborn lying in a crib sleeping invarious cute outfits!)

Walt and I even tried a foray into animation, with a movie that took forEVer to make, but which ran about a minute. I don't remember what it was exactly, but I remember that I was walking through a pile of socks or something like that. Very avant garde at the time.

Walt and his friend Dave had grand plans for what they were going to do with movies. "When they got rich" (I'm still waiting).

But it was great having a movie camera to record the various events of our young children's lives. And, in time, we moved up to a video camera.

Jim of Jim's Journal talks about his history with cameras in a recent entry talking about his new Flip video camera, and his history pretty much parallels ours. I really related to his experience with his first video camera:

When Jill and Jeremy were little Nancy and I bought a video camera and VHS video recorder (two separate pieces of hardware... having the video recorder and its heavy battery as something you could sling over your shoulder made the camera lighter and easier to hold than with the all-in-one units) and it only cost (in 1986 dollars) about eleven or twelve times as much as this Flip Video unit cost me (in 2008 dollars).

God, it was wonderful being able to record to video, but it was like carrying a small television around with you wherever you went. Still, it was state of the art, so we loved it.

Video technology improved and by the time we got our next camera, it was not only smaller, but the kids were old enough that they could use it themselves. Well, that was pretty much the end of videotaping for me for a number of years. The camera was always being used to film some project or other.

Never saw so much creativity come out of a group of kids. I cannot tell you how many home movies we have, all of which involve some sort of a chase scene, on foot when they were young, and in cars when they got older. There was frequently some sort of "superhuman" aspect to it--a hero in to save the day (Ned had a Superman complex). That often involved finding a high place to jump off of. It is fortunate that I didn't realize they were jumping off of our roof (we have a 2 story house) until years later.

Whenever the kids got together with their friends, there was a video involved. Lawsuit rehearsed at the local theatre (where the kids all worked as well), so as they got older, the videos became more complex, involved scenery that might be hanging around the theatre.

Today the Lawsuit group are all in their late 30s or early 40s and still when they get together, there is a good chance that a video might be involved. They are still doing chase scenes and special effects. The plot lines haven't really changed in the past 25 or so years (though sex had been added to the last videos I saw)

What possible things could they have learned from all that playing around with videos? What good could it do them in their future life?

Well, check this:

Ned is now the image director or producer or something like that (the receptionist in his office didn't know what he is "officially") and his job is ... well, the image of the station. Writing and recording jingles, for one thing and making videos to promote the station.

(And yes, that is Ned as the newscaster in the above video.)

His videos frequently involve chases and/or special effects.

Gee--I wonder where he learned that... (and I'm wondering if anybody has jumped off a roof yet.)