I have not seen Grandpa Ollie in more than 50 year, and Dad has been gone for nearly two decades. But there they were, on the screen, in grainy, contrasty 8mm movie motion along with other aunts and uncles back in their prime. I played and replayed that video to savor its details and refresh my memory.
Recently we lost a family member and family scoured our smartphones to compiled a 1,400 photo collection, from which more than 200 were printed for photo boards. While all are lovely images, none had the impact of a single one-minute video clip of our loved one in motion, in full character, from a brief moment in his life.
I’m fortunate to have more than 100 photos of Dad, from his childhood to near his end. They are a wonderful representation of him and his times and places, but none convey his mannerisms or his voice or his distinct way of turning a simple question into a lecture.
As of 2016, we are making one TRILLION photos a year and we’ve lost the patience for this visual overload. We swipe and click screens as fast as we can just to get through these massive photo file piles.
But we will sit through a well crafted video.
The days of home VHS tape – fast forwarding through 23 minutes of nothing to get to that two minutes of fame – are long gone. Today’s smartphone video clips can easily be combined, trimmed, rearranged, transitions added, audio enhanced and titles created using smartphone or tablet apps like Apple’s iMovie or VN Video Editor for Android or Apple.
Pictures have a place for a quick grab of that moment, but video’s motion and audio takes our senses and our minds into a completely different space.