I’m old enough that I’ve managed to observe most of the milestones in my life without video capturing it, and I have no regrets about that. But I was curious when Dave White, a friend of TMP, posted a link on his blog to the wedding video that has gone viral, the one in which a bunch of very good sports dance down the aisle to a Chris Brown song.
(Cynical thought #1: A Chris Brown song, at a wedding? Not my first choice.)
It’s rather sweet. I think Dave, in fact, nailed the source of its charm: These folks are not necessarily keen to perform, but they are game, coming through for their friends.
(Cynical thought #2: Has anyone else here read Mary McCarthy’s The Group? There’s a priceless bit about a demonstration at a New York hotel. An older woman, studying the photos in the paper, realizes that it’s the woman in the opera cape who orchestrated the whole thing, largely because she wanted to wear an opera cape. The cause was secondary to her desire to dress up. The bride in the video seems very likable, but I have a hunch that she had a big ol’ case of My Day-itis.)
But — and this goes beyond cynicism — I can’t help thinking about the participants watching this video a decade, two decades hence. In some cases, perhaps most cases, it will bring joy. But the odds are, given the sheer size of the wedding party — further bolstering my hunch about My Day-itis, but maybe the groom just had a lot of friends — that the video will be bittersweet for some, one day.
Given the lack of videos in my life, I throw it open to you: Are you glad that you’ve recorded certain milestones, sad that you didn’t capture others? What’s it like, watching these videos five, ten, twenty years down the road? Are videos better than photos, or just different? Is there a visual souvenir, video or photo, that you can’t imagine your life without?
I’ll put a cut-and-paste link in the comments for those who are not yet among the millions to watch the wedding video.
When I was in the 8th grade, I hated my father for embarrassing me by plunging through the crowd to take moving pictures of me marching in the Thanksgiving Day parade in our hometown with his new 8mm movie camera. Now it’s 45 years later and I am pricing media transfer companies so that I can view all this film from the 1960s and 1970s. I think there is video of my college graduation, my aunt’s wedding, my brother’s graduations, long deceased relatives and who knows what on all those reels.
I tried taking pictures of events in my son’s life, but it’s hard to take a picture and be a part of the experience if you are separated by a device like a camera. If my father were still alive, maybe he could have done the video while I enjoyed the moment.
I’m trying to start a project to take my video and put it to dvd. In doing that I’ve pulled all my video tapes, including the one that was converted to video from an 8mm film that my parents took when I was growing up.
Besides the fact that my children got a big kick out of seeing me as a kid, it’s great to see my parents young and the house where I grew up.
Videos of weddings and childbirth weren’t really available when I was doing these things, so I don’t know if I would have participated, but being able to hear my son talk without his 2 front teeth and seeing my daughter and her friends acting goofy when they were in grade school is one of my favorite and special pastimes.
On the Today Show one morning last week,that entire wedding party showed up to do the dance again. They danced with the video being shown in sync, yet!
One of the men was wheeled down the “aisle” and then stood to dance with crutches.
It seems to me they must have wanted to extend their 15 minutes of fame.
Oh, that’s funny!
Love pictures! I like pictures of my own family, my friends, old pictures (one of my favorite haunts: http://www.shorpy.com/) I think the best pictures always have a person or animal in them. Every time I visit my mother, I pour through the old albums. I like videos too. I’ve only seen one of me as a child, and wish I had more. I can’t watch the video of my wedding in 1990 because it makes me sick (motion sickness, not the fact that I’m not married any more) but it has some really funny moments in it. I think my liking pictures probably depends on how it’s done though. My friends are always sharing short video clips or pictures they’ve taken, and I think the narration has something to do with why I like them so much, because they are so funny. Looking at stuff my SIL shares? That�s not so enjoyable. (She�s really boring.)
What a coincidence! I’ve just spent the last few days sorting out 30 years worth of photos that I’d stuffed into a big carton during the last move. Now I’m starting to put them into albums. In the process, I find I’m throwing away many of them–well, I’m not a very good photographer and anyway don’t see much point in a lot of the ones that actually turned out. I *am* glad I have photos of the kids at various ages, though, as are they.
My siblings & I hated the way our father took home movies all the time but we enjoy watching the favorite clips that were transferred to video. They’ve been a great way to pass on family stories to the next generation.
Like Marjorie, I wonder what to do with the dozen family albums that came to me when my mother died a few years ago. I can put names to many, but not all of the generations of people in them, thanks to my mother’s relentless indoctrination. Being ambivalent about the whole genealogy thing, I didn’t pass on that obsession to my kids and, as a result, they have no interest in the pictures of people they don’t know. I guess, as Marjorie said, the albums will just get thrown away.
Looking at pictures of my mother as a young woman makes me sad. All that joy, all that confidence, all that promise. My life turned out much better than I ever expected. Hers did not.
Link is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-94JhLEiN0&feature=player_embedded
Meanwhile, I will credit the bride for what appear to be bridesmaids dresses that really could be worn again.
ETA: I fixed the wanton apostrophe problem above. Would have done it sooner, but didn’t realize I could edit my comments once the allotted hour was past. It’s good to be the administrator.
Unless I remember the story attached to a picture, it’s meaningless to me. The two photos I have from my sister’s wedding capture two conversations I remember: my father asking my mother if she needed anything from the buffet, and my two younger sisters checking in with each other about the whereabouts of the emergency flask before leaving the house. No one else, looking at those photos, would have any idea of the stories behind them.
I don’t take pictures, much less video. I never have. If you’re taking pictures at a major event, the picture-taking is your experience, not the event itself. It’s always struck me not only as a way of distancing oneself from the moment, but also as a way of inserting oneself into an event that’s not necessarily (or even usually) about you.
For related reasons, I’m never especially interested in pictures of long-past events. They’re not honest; they’re not even really very informative. I always have the same reaction to old photos of people I’m close to: who are those people? Even my own self in a photo is a stranger to me.
Aggh, I just read this over and realized how sharp it sounds. Sorry — some people are picture takers and some are not. I’m just not.
The only important day video I have is of the day I got married for the second time. No video of the first one.
That’s the only one I care about anyway.
Laura wrote: <em>… the video will be bittersweet for some, one day.</em>
But isn’t this true of any memory? I don’t need pictures or video to know that some people probably have great memories of my 30th high school reunion but I will always remember it because I watched my old friend Kathy and her husband get plastered. It was bittersweet to see friends I hadn’t seen for years be so unhappy.
I say this as someone with a video camera and digital camera that I rarely use. I think some people get so caught up in recording the moment that they miss out on the most important aspects of the moment.
When my son first started pulling himself up on everything and looked like he might walk I made sure the video camera was right by me everywhere we went in the house. But when the big moment finally came I was so busy watching him and the amazing movement of his little body that I didn’t grab the camera at all and I don’t regret it. Now he’s doing it all the time and I’ve finally gotten around to recording it so I can send it to friends and family.
And when it comes down to it, aren’t these visual souveniers more for other people than ourselves. We take pictures so we can show other people. We put them in albums out on our coffee tables so other people can look at them. We record the videos so we can show them at parties or put them up on YouTube. If YouTube didn’t exist I don’t think this wedding would have happened this way.
The photographer didn’s show up for my wedding so I just have some snapshots taken by an aunt with no facility for it. They are fine. At least she didn’t use that camera where the pictures faded away.
We had no video camera with the kids growing up. But we have hundreds of pictures and even more in my head. That’s enough.
We rarely use our video camera. Mostly because we can never find all the accoutrements necessary to run the thing. I prefer a regular point and shoot. Although we did get some great video of my daughter’s Christmas choir concert last year that I managed to figure out how to put up on YouTube for relatives’ enjoyment.
I feel strongly both ways.
I like having photographs to remind me of styles and moments that I’d otherwise forget or not linger on.
What I most treasure, strangly enough, is an audio tape of my mother’s voice and her laugh. My dad took lots of Super 8 film when we were kids and I transferred that to dvd recently, but there’s no audio on it.
I confess to taking lots of pictures, but I hate posed shots and mostly I capture the critters around the house or a project underway. When we’re on vacation or something along those lines, I take a lot of pictures at once and then put the camera away so that I’m in the moment. It can be a nice way to distance yourself, though, when the moment isn’t so pleasant.
I hate having photos taken of me and only do it under extreme duress (or as part of a large group where I can stand in the last row, which is what I did in a photo taken at the last Bouchercon of my reader’s group). Video of me is out of the question. Perhaps being fat and ugly has something to do with it. Really.
I do like taking photos when I (rarely) go on a vacation. I have a small but meaningful album of photos from my most recnt trip to London in 2005. They do help to remind me of a wonderful trip to a wondeful place.
There is one special photo that I keep in bedroom. It is of a man who is very dear to me. We once took a weekend car trip to Washington D.C., just the two of us. The photo is of him at the fountain that is between the east and west buildings of the National Gallery of Art. He looks very happy and I was feeling happy as well with the pleasure of the place and the company. It is one instance where I was glad to have captured the moment in a photo.
Neither my sister or I have any children. There is nobody after we are gone. So what happens to the family photos then? They will be tossed out by some stranger. It’s all very fleeting, isn’t it? So perhaps as others have said, it’s best to enjoy the moment and hold it in your heart then to feel like it has to be documented on film or video.
I laughed with the participants in that oddly choreographed moment in time. Some looked delighted, some uncomfortable, some bemused and some just thrilled to finally get to the end. It recalled my own no video, few photographs (drunk photog) wedding 33 years ago. We danced around my in-laws pool deep in south arkansas to “Southern Nights” with a lagniappe of “Thank God and Greyhound She’s Gone”. Fabulous memories, terrific marriage. And contrary to current thought there is “no proof out there”.
When I have a few minutes, I will try to find the This American Life show that was all about “found” audio.
There’s one TAL story about a son’s audio “letters” to his father in the, IIRC, Merchant Marines. Heartbreaking. And just today, I listened to an MP3 of someone close to me, telling a story about his son, and it was very moving. (Helps that it was brilliantly edited by the BBC, with perfect musical cues.)
I would give almost anything to have a recording of my mother’s voice. It’s strange that we never think to record sound, instead of pictures.
We have our wedding on video, I think I’ve watched it once in 17 years. Most of our photographs are in a big box in the basement, unsorted.
The first time I saw the wedding video my feeling was tacky, tacky, tacky and I haven’t changed my opinion.
iam on blackberry. i do not recommend iit for this. so will bebrief, as it is really difficult to read above comments. i saw the vid a week ago or so. my first thought after realising this was, in fact, not a joke; that girl’s mmother must be dead. 2nd thought; well, this is a state that elected both jessie ventura and al franken.
June,
If the Today show called and asked me to recreate the moment I did push-ups while reciting Marx Brothers movies (in chronological order, along with the character played by Groucho in each), I might be tempted to do it.
Meanwhile, I just watched it again. I think I was unfair to the bride. She clearly has a sense of humor about herself and she dances herself down the aisle, which is quite endearing. It’s all very charming. It’s just hard to get old and watch this from the vantage point of middle age, knowing what I do.
can’t help but think potential for buyer’s remorse. like getting a tatoo for some people. 20 years later, how is it going to look?
Keith,
Do you still have the link to their “Moses Supposes” dance?
I’m grateful for the video camera. The sleep deprivation of the first four years or so of my twins’ lives was so severe that I don’t remember a lot of it.
But I’m not that interested in capturing big events; more just funny moments and typical scenes. Today I got about ten minutes of a typical morning, and last night I got the family watching a thunderstorm with the window open. I hope the Quicktimes survive the decades.
The video was funny but I don’t get them doing it.
over the years my take on this has changed enormously. I have photos of my grandchildren througout their school years and I can look at them and see how their faces and bodies have matured but then when I see them in person they don’t look anything like the pictures I have. So the pics I take for the record don’t really accomplish that.
I like that I have a few pictures of my mother. My daughter has an extraordinary amount of pictures from when her first and second born arrived up to now with many variations on the theme of them growing up.
I only have three pictures of myself growing up and two of those are shots by people who used to came around neighborhoods selling the service. One was on a Shetland pony in full cowgirl regalia. One is a baby picture that is actually the only picture of me that I like.
I grew up in a non geeky tech world when having a camera wasn’t something everyone had or even thought about. I have my memories of things like my grandmother’s piano recitals and her best students playing the pieces I heard them practicing for weeks at a time. Or the many other events that are etched on my mind complete with all the surrounding circumstances.
I am the most into music and I have lots of CDs and DVDs that I can listen to any time I want to. I’ve loaded most of them onto my computer and that makes it so much easier to call them up when I’m *feeling* a certain way that the wnatever piece of music is right for.
But really I’ve stopped recording events since I borrowed a camera to use at Bouchercon 07 here in Anchorage because I wasn’t all that familiar with the camera, very few of the pictures were any good. So whenever I want to see pics of that I go to someone else’s web site and look at theirs. Actually I don’t need to see pictures of the things that I most value like conversations with people I know from email and here and cons and friends.
When I see pictures of people whoever, in whatever they are doing and then I meet them in person they almost never look like their pictures. For instance Laura is much more beautiful in person than in pictures. I find that to be true of most people.
I guess my real answer then would be no I don’t need to record by voice or image the events of my own life where I was present. I like having pictures of people and events where I wasn’t present but that requires my dependence on others.
I will admit to being fascinated by these new fangled camera phones. Wow we are headed to Star Trek land eh.