October 13, 2011

Those Lasting Memories

After my dad died, I got hold of a viewer and my hubby and I sorted through his collection of Super 8 films. They were badly labelled or not labelled at all, so it made for some interesting discoveries (70s porn anyone?)
We finally got through ALL the Super 8s and I brought in the good ones for processing.

The good stuff:

-My parent's wedding
-My sister's first birthday and first steps
-My sister playing in a wading pool with like, two drops of water because my parents were insane and paranoid
-My grandfather and uncle
-A surprise birthday party my mom held for my dad, which he hated and she never surprised him again.

The weird stuff:

-My parents never thought to turn the camera on themselves.
-My mom at work, at Bell Canada, and everyone is smoking in the office.
-My father always shot random women's asses - did he not realize other people would see these things? (and I can just picture my parents watching them together and my mom giving him hell)
-A tape called "Barbara." "Barbara" dances a bit. Then she's on a bed in a bra and undies. Then she puts on sunglasses and a hat and dances some more. Then she dances with a man. He gets a little too grabby and she hits him. They continue dancing. That's the video.
What drugs were they taking? Who the hell is Barbara?


Lessons learned:


-If you own a camera, take pics of *yourself* sometimes because looking at foliage and whatever other stuff you think is interesting is not as interesting as *you* over time.
-Take more shots of *people* and not things.
-Name the files appropriately, with people's names if you can, dates and descriptions, not just "old" or "Montreal." It may be obvious to you now, but it may not be 30 years down the line to someone else. Name footage as if someone 20 years from now needs to know what the heck it is.

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