Share the moment
A Child's Birthday Party
Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory. - Dr Seuss
Putting together a great celebration party, like a birthday, can be very time consuming.
But you have what it takes to put it all together. Because you do it every year. You have the skills to make it great. You’ve organised the location, the decor, the invitations, the snacks, the helpers, the cake and all the rest of it. Your setup is the best and it's going to be the greatest party ever.
And then the event comes along, besides a few tiny hiccups which only you noticed anyway, the whole thing went really well. The person at the centre of all the attention, your birthday boy or girl was adored and most people went home with the memories of having had loads of fun. Mission accomplished.
But, as time would have it, our memories reduce to a blur of the occasion. Highlights of the biggest whoopsie, or a touching moment, almost always outshine the rest.
No matter how much work you put into this party, how much care went into the details of each invitation, or the hours spent sourcing, or even baking, a crazy cake, it all fades away… Sometimes we cling to party decor for years after, until they have gathered so much enough dust that we hide them from ourselves because we still don't have the heart to throw them away.
And at the very best, you have a series of photos and video clips somewhere in the deep end of your phone or on someone else’s phone, or in a messenger group created after the party where you all shared memories with each other. But these too, end up pretty much forgotten. Lost in a file in a file in a “file called to sort, on a harddrive, in a box that says to sort, on a shelf in a spare room.
These photos and video clips all too often don't do the event, or the memory of the event, any justice whatsoever anyway. The best we can hope for is seeing a glimpse of what we, our friends and our family looked like all those years ago. And so, what is the alternative? What is the solution to this media clutter that we collect at every opportunity a memorable occasion arises?
Take better pictures! make a cool video! they say. Some of you might have hired a professional, but that comes with a price tag. We tend to do this for big once off occasions like a wedding, but can be a bit pricey year on year for say little timmies birthdays?
Maybe some of you have already tried capturing a birthday yourself and settled for what you got or given up. And I completely understand why.
Because as if putting an event like this together, and running around making sure it's all going smoothly wasn't enough, you have to now go and learn how to get your settings right, learn what aperture means, know which lighting to use, buy extra accessories, find the right app, and then learn how the app works too, and things like what is a frame-rate? And then you end having to ask for help. No ways.
But you say “no ways” at what cost? Little Timmy is only 5 once. So you need to find a solution here. There has got to be some technology solution out there that will make this easier. There has to be.
It's crazy that we live in a world where photography has become an everyday person’s hobby. The instagram bubble has still not burst 10 years on. Because it's not a phase, it's become a way of life, instagram has lasted longer that the 80s!! By now We should be swimming in beautiful content to kick start our memories whenever we want it. You should be able to show a slideshow of little Timmy’s 5th birthday at his 21st birthday because we in the damn 21 century dammit. But this very rarely works that way. This rarely works out of any guests of the event either. Because how many nice engaging slideshow videos, that flood back the memories of it all, do you have from the last party you went to?
Yeah, I thought so.
Because doing even more work just to make the memory of the party better, is too much. In fact for most people capturing memories get in the way of truly living in the moment. Instead of enjoying yourself, you were trying to capture it all for later. And its crazy but We all do this all the time… but actually You just are doing it wrong. And the mistake your making is so simple to fix. You can have both the living memory and recorded memory … without interfering with each other.
I've been filming events like kids' birthdays for over 10 years and i've been doing things very differently than how you’d imagine. N You can also benefit from a completely different approach to capturing memories.
I need to share only 1 thing with you to change everything you thought you knew about capturing better memories. It can be done in a simple and easy way, because, it's not about HOW you capture something, it’s about WHAT you capture. Thats it, but obviously thats not enough of an explanation so here’s a very quick overview.
People with no experience in taking photos or making videos will 10 out of 10 times ask me all the wrong questions. like What camera should I buy, how many lenses do you need, How should I hold my camera correctly, how did I make it look like that, which app is the best, how much was your tripod. What is aperture exactly again?
All of these questions are like icing on a cake. Sure it makes the cake look cool. And it adds that sweet layer of yumminess to the overall package, but if the body of the cake is dry no amount of icing makes it better.
Good icing on a dry cake pretty much only makes it tolerable. Definitely not memorable. If you want to know which camera to get to capture better memories than you are completely focusing on the WRONG stuff.
What you need to know is what went into the cake to make it good? How many eggs, how much flour, sugar and whatnot went into the dough to get the right mix! And that is it.
Do not start the process of capturing memories by trying to take better photos or filming like a pro. Start by capturing the right content.
The internet is filled with videos of things that people LOVE to watch that are filmed terribly! but the content and of what happened in the video makes people love it. If you want a memory like that, something that captured a life event in all its glory as it happened then you just need to know the combination of what to film.
How you film it is secondary, it is the icing on the outer layer of the cake.
And this story is going to get better for you now. Because there is a simple recipe to follow. After studying my own videos I looked at the content that performed best and a simple pattern started to emerge. If i got one of these 2 of those and 3 of these shots somehow that combo made people really appreciate the final product.
If you follow a birthday like a recipe you are not going to waste your time getting what you dont need. Just like Your cake needs 3 eggs, not 4.
Also when you capture only what you need, the pressure is off. You can see a moment, capture it, and resume your enjoyment, live in the moment. With a clear cut recipe
You can easily delegate the task to other people so easily. Hey dad, can you capture 5 images of the kids playing Hey mom can you film the cake coming out.
It only Takes two seconds to do this if you know upfront who needs to get what. Then let the day unfold and you know that you will have everything you need to relive this amazing moment in your life again, later.
It's bizarrely easy when you follow a checklist like this. Because to really capture the emotion and memory of an event you only need a series of 20 to 40 images and clips…. Of the right stuff.
When you have the right photos & clips you can throw them together into an app to make a slideshow video in a matter of minutes because the list is basically an editing recipe. You don't even have to understand editing, just have to follow the instructions. This combination of shots turns a slideshow into a story. This combination of ingredients is what makes the centre of your cake turn out so yummy everyone will want a piece of it.
So if you want to make a brilliant birthday slideshow that your birthday person and the guest will enjoy years later you just need the recipe.
I want to share this recipe with you and its absolutely free , download your birthday memory checklist right now because
Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory. - Dr Seuss
