Jack Tame: The wonders of old home videos

I’m in Wellington for Matariki weekend to see family and celebrate a mate’s 40th. But being Wellington and being the mid-winter school holidays, it was about 4C yesterday at my parents-in-law's house. The wind and rain were coming in sideways, and though I always insist on getting young kids outside and running them as much as possible, most of yesterday was spent in the lounge.   

With three generations and four kids under ten in a confined space, board games and books will only get you so far. Enter the old family videos. It was the perfect day for it. My father-in-law pulled out a digitised home videos from the early nineties —which by the way, is a great reminder to hurry up and digitise your old videos before it’s too late!— and we sat down to marvel and delight at what life for our family used to be.   

There was something especially quaint about that era of family home videos. It was before the nifty little family handycam era where you’d see tourists documenting every second of their trip to Disneyland. It was earlier, about the very first time the technology made it possible to go and film stuff at home by yourself.  

Growing up, I remember my mum coming home from work with an enormous contraption. She’d borrowed it for a couple of days, and from memory it almost required its own coalfired boiler just to fire up and start recording. My wife’s family’s experience was almost exactly the same. A giant camera, super expensive relative to incomes, borrowed for a couple of days. 

Watching the videos yesterday, I was struck by a few things. First of all, obviously, they really are time capsules, and for whatever reason back then, people just loved to hit record and leave those things rolling. But it means that over 10 or 15 minutes of the same continuous shot, if you really make the effort to observe, you notice all sorts of little details. There’s the obvious stuff that has changed: the fashion, the floral print dresses, the bowl haircuts, the moustaches, the knitted sweaters with different fruit on the front. But even little things: kitchens without dishwashers, birthday and party decorations that were saved and recycled, old bedsheets slung to protect the couches. No computers. No cell phones. No screens. 

The thing that really hit me yesterday was the strength of genetics. Of course, I’ve seen heaps of photos of my wife and her brother as a kid. But the videos we watched yesterday were the first moving pictures I’d seen of my brother-in-law at about the same age as our nine-year-old is today. It was extraordinary. Just the way the little boy in the video was holding his body, laughing, and moving was so shockingly familiar. I was almost spluttering as I watched it, turning my head from the boy on the TV, across the room, to a near mirror-image of a boy in the flesh, giggling as he watched his uncle on the screen.   

The other thing that struck me was the value of scarcity. Perhaps I’m romanticising it a bit much, but one of the things that makes the home videos of that era so precious is that there aren’t that many of them. Recording a video back then was an event. Not just because of the coal boiler needed to fire the camera into life, but because cameras were super expensive and it took serious planning to organise them. Obviously we’ve gained a lot by having extraordinary video cameras in our pockets, but I wonder if we’ve also lost something too. There was a genuine sense of wonder —for all of us, three generations— in sitting down and soaking up scenes from three decades ago. It’d be a shame to think it becomes something my kids just take for granted. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks at me.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
So I'm in Wellington for Matariki this weekend. Alas, I'm
not here for the rugby. I'm here to see family
and to celebrate my mate's fortieth birthday. But being Wellington
and being the midwinter school holidays, it was I don't
know about four degrees yesterday at my parents in law's house.

(00:33):
The wind and rain were coming in sideways, and although
I always always insist on getting young kids outside and
running them as much as possible, most of yesterday was
spent in the lounge. So with what three generations and
four kids under ten in a confined space, board games

(00:56):
and books were only even going to get us so far.
Enter the old family videos. Honestly, it was the perfect
day for it. Yesterday my father and pulled out a
digitized home video set from the early nineties, which, by
the way, is a great reminder to hurry up and
digitize your old family videos before it's too late, and

(01:18):
we all together sat down to kind of marvel and
delight at what life for our family used to be.
And I don't know, but there was something, something kind
of quaint about that era of family home videos. You know,
it was before the nifty little family handycam era where

(01:41):
you would see tourists documenting every second of their trip
to Disneyland. It was much earlier. It was about, I think,
the very first time that video camera technology made it
possible to go and film stuff at home by yourself.
It's when the whole concept of a home video was
kind of invented. And growing up, I remember Mum coming

(02:01):
home from work with an enormous contraption. She'd borrowed it
for a couple of days, and from memory, you know,
it sort of almost required its own coal fired boiler
just to fire up and start recording. And it turns
out my wife's family's experience was almost exactly the same.
A giant camera, super expensive back then relative to incomes,

(02:22):
borrowed for a couple of days for a couple of
precious home videos, and watching the videos yesterday, I was
struck by a few things. So first of all, they
really are time capsules. And for whatever reason back then,
people just loved to hit record and leave those things rolling.

(02:43):
I don't know what it was. I mean, you couldn't
go back and edit things easily right, but for whatever reason,
no one ever seemed to button off. And it means
though that over the kind of ten or fifteen or
twenty minutes of the same continuous shot, if you really
make the effort to observe, you notice all sorts of
little details. So there's the obvious stuff that's changed, you know,

(03:04):
the fashion, the the floral print dresses, the perms, the
bowl haircuts, the mustaches, the knittared sweaters with different fruit
on the front. But honestly, even the little things I
found really interesting. You know, shots of kitchens without dishwashers,
birthday and party decorations that were saved and recycled, and

(03:26):
they saved and recycled year after year after year. In
the case of our family, old bed sheets that were
slung over the good couches to try and protect the catches.
No computers anywhere, no cell phones, no screens. And the
thing that really hit me yesterday watching these videos was
the strength of genetics. And of course I've seen heaps

(03:48):
of photos of my wife and her brother from when
they were kids, but the videos we watched were the
first moving pictures I had seen of my brother in
law at about the same age as our nine year
old is today. And honestly, it was extraordinary, but really extraordinary.
Just the way the little boy in the video was

(04:10):
moving or or was kind of holding his body, and
the ways in which he was laughing, it was all
so shockingly familiar. I was almost spluttering as I was
watching it, turning my head from the boy on the
TV across the room to a near mirror image of
a boy in the flesh giggling as he watched his

(04:31):
uncle on the screen. It's crazy how strong that stuff is.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
You know.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
We always think of genetics as just being their hair color,
eye color, that kind of thing. But all of these
barely tangible little things about the ways in which we
moved through the world are defined by genetics. And it's
only when you're confronted by someone from thirty years ago
on the screen who looks almost exactly the same as
someone sitting right next to you on the couch that
you realize how significant it is. The other thing that

(04:57):
really struck me was the value of scarcity. And look,
perhaps I am romanticizing it a bit march, but one
of the things that makes the home videos of that
era so precious is that there aren't many of them.
Recording a video back then was an event, not just
because of the coal boiler needed to fire the camera

(05:20):
into life, but because cameras were super expensive and it
took serious planning to actually organize them. And you know,
obviously we have gained a lot by having extraordinary video
cameras in our pockets, immediately accessible any time of the day.
But ah, I just wonder if we have also lost

(05:43):
something too. There was there was a genuine sense of
wonder for all of us three generations in sitting down
and soaking up scenes from three decades ago. And honestly,
it'd be a shame to think it becomes something my
kids just take for granted.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
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