This Memorial Day my annual family gathering was dealt a horrible blow: RAIN! So although we cooked outside under the eaves, we had to eat and celebrate inside, which can lead to a fairly dull time without access to a sunny outdoors and frolic in the pool. What to do? The conversation was great, the nibbles and the meal were fantastic, but then what? I hauled out a vintage birthday tribute video I produced and invited my guests (brother, sister, spouses and my son) to travel back in time and look at a tribute that I had created for my brother’s birthday ten years ago. It had been shown at a big family party at that time and was well-received. It was nearly 25 minutes long, which isn’t necessarily a good thing, But I had unearthed a great deal of photos and video that I hadn’t been able to use the last time I did a video for my siblings (My sister’s engagement party, some 40 years before) so I knew there was a lot of material I could show of ancestry, family events, and cultural references I didn’t have access to (or hadn’t happened) since then.
Heritage
After my parents died, in the 70s and 80s, we inherited my father and mother’s collection of photos. My father was a photo hobbyist, and there were plenty of pictures from both of their collection of unseen events– their wedding, in particular, (above) and plenty of photos of their ancestry and heritage. There was video I had shot of my brother’s late-age wedding that had never been seen in one place. There were cultural references I could make use of (like Star Wars, Glenn Miller and family favorite The Beach Boys) to use pictorially, musically or photographically.
Humor
I love injecting humor into a birthday video tribute. The Star Wars Crawl opening was due to the fact that my video editing system had the crawl effect and I thought it would be funny. The fact that it goes on forever was part f the joke. My comments on-camera at their wedding would never have been seen by anyone and got a big laugh… and the time travel segment?
30 years ago my son and I had taped an intro to a re-transfer I had done of my sisters engagement slide show. For this, I dubbed new dialogue on that video indicating that I knew my brother’s 60th birthday was 20 years away but that was okay, because “I can time travel”. I then cut to a scene of me being wheeled in a wheel chair shot ten years ago in New York City for a handicab cab company we had done a video for. I’m clearly old, fat and bald, unlike the 20-year-old shot. I dubbed in my voice saying, “Hey, wait a minute, I’m OLD!” This got the biggest laugh of the day. Self-depreciation always works.
Best Wishes
By video or by phone recording, we added “Happy Birthdays” from as much of the extended family as we could find. This added an extra dimension to the video, and at its original showing, most of those people were there, so they became an extended part of the authorship of the video. The segment above isfrom my brother’s and my sister and her family, which I used as an excuse to launch into a sequence of the building of the house we moved into in New Jersey when we left Washington Heights, NC.
A Birthday Tribute Video Ends on Tears
Doing a wrap-up featuring faces long gone and still with us with powerful music always guarantees tears except perhaps from the most manliest of men. It did here. Having the new (old) photos, unseen videos, and classic family moments to use, the video ended on tears and applause and gratitude. It’s about your audience– their faces, their moments, their high points and low points. Which leads me to this….
Finale: It’s Not About Me
I squirmed a bit watching this video with my family. Was it too long? That’s self-indulgent. Is here too much “me”? That’s self-indulgent. Yes, my producing skills improved over the years, and I guess I wanted to show that off. Is that self-indulgent? And the time travel bit? Well, it was funny. but still… was that self-indulgent? I think the power of the all the new (old) footage and pictures helped in making it less so, and the audience reaction said that it wasn’t. We did a video 25 yers ago celebrating the life of a childhood friend’s mother. There wasn’t a lot of pictures or footage… they were busy living life. So the on-camera narrator was the number one son, and the was in perhaps 40% of the video. But he was funny, interviewed all the grandchildren and children for their happy birthday wishes, and it was a major success. Sometimes, you do what you think is right and it works out! Here is the video.
