Back in November of 2013, mama (before she was mama) showed me an amazing video that showed a second a day of a baby’s first year. Ignoring the fact that I did not have a video camera or a baby, I decreed that I would steal the idea and create my own version.
Luckily for me, I did have a pregnant wife (along with a shitty looking, fake Christmas tree)
Fortunately, I had been good that year and Santa rewarded me with a video camera. By the time January came to an end, I had become competent enough to shoot and edit video. I was ready to roll but that damn baby was taking his own sweet time.
Once he arrived, I quickly realized the actual scope of the project and came to the devastating realization that if I missed a day, just one day, it would ruin the integrity of the entire project. To cover my ass, I set up a daily reminder and crossed my fingers. I had inadvertently added stress to the already stressful situation of being a first time parent.
The next thing I realized was that I would need to do a little more than just shoot video of him sitting there, I needed to show his growth throughout the year. Surprisingly, you can fit a lot of action into a one second clip and, though I didn’t need Spielberg-like skills, I needed my 365 second video to tell an engaging story. I needed to capture the big moments in a baby’s first year – in one second bites.
I will admit, there were a few days when I almost forgot and had to either take video of him sleeping or, worse yet, take video of him sleeping on his monitor.
This is a photo of a video of a video. Soooooo meta
Another thing that could have derailed the entire project was when mama and the little man traveled to Jamaica in January. Mama came through like a champ though, and found a way to get footage each and every day that they were gone.
It probably did not help matters that on top of the daily videos and the whole learning how to be a parent thing, we also decided to take cutesy monthly photos of his first year. The idea was to take photos of him in his current clothes and then take some photos in something that he would grow into. To be safe, I selected a size 18M but failed to realize that baby clothing sizes are ridiculously random.
You’d think after 12 months of dancing that the little dude would be tired enough to sleep through the night (but you would be wrong, so very wrong)
Finally, the little dude turned one and it was time to finish editing. It might surprise you to learn (as it did me) that it takes much longer than a second to locate the best clip of each day. Some days there were five or six videos to go through and other days the footage was less than stellar. The biggest hurdle was that I hadn’t worked on the project since I put together the six month video. For you counting aficionados, that means that I had over 180 days left to edit.
Which explains why this post is so late
Now that I’ve hyped the shit out of my little movie, the time has come to share it with the world. Personally, I think it’s pretty moving – but I’m a huge fan of the main star – so my perspective may be skewed. Hope you like it!
I’m a photographer so have lots of photographs of my children but I really wish I had taken more video as that first year just goes too quickly. Gorgeous video
That is a huge undertaking with a very fulfilling result. I wish I’d have had the dedication to do something like that. As is, we’re usually at least two weeks late with the month-old photo. Congrats.