The art of home videos. What happened to them? What do they look like now?

Since the summer of last year, I have been invested in digitalizing home videos (and family photos) which has been a process. From buying the wrong CDs to copy on, to finding out the combo VHS Player I have only records screen programs - the utter disappointment of finding this out and knowing I wasted so much time; it halted my journey. Then buying a video capture device, to find out it only works on Windows - a device I do not own. Now finally having tested and found a method that works, I have started my journey of digitalizing home videos.

During all of this, questions on my mind were ‘What happened to home videos? What do they look like now? Do people still create home videos? What do family archives look like now? Are home videos going to be vertical?

However, I had some answers in mind too, such as:

• A large majority of people use their phones primarily to video and film.
• Community and family life is different from how it was when I was younger due to various reasons.

Slightly into the process of finding methods to digitalize, I was watching home videos with family, because I was going through all the CDs I could find and sorting them out. I landed on my sibling’s joint birthday party back in the early 10s and knew I was going to have a laugh. During watching and being reminded of the time, my niece asked me “Where am I?” and I was like oop this was before your time. This conversation prompted me to understand how home videos have changed and what they look like now or what they could look like.

Thoughts on what Home videos now could look like:

• Apple memories - they create videos that you can change the song and vibe.
• Snapchat Memories - reminds you of the day (this can be very….) - throwback to 2016.
• Instagram Archives - also reminds you of the day. A calendar with missing stories sometimes, I don’t like that.
• Youtube - creating a channel and posting unlisted videos to share with family and friends

Now, this is the start of something (I’m not quoting High School Musical 1) that I plan to look into, as it’s something I’m interested in. Memories and archives, let’s see what we find.