I made a video for my wife Claire, but when I started she was my fience, and when I came up with the idea we weren’t even engaged yet. My point is the process was quite long. Even before it mattered weather or not I had the idea I had begun filming our life together. I guess this is a product of a lifetime of filming, starting with VHS and ending with digital video. More then anything its a love for capturing moments of my life and recreating them to make people smile, and to keep the memory alive.

Claire and I have been together for over 7 years, and I have footage from every year. Because of the advancement in technology in the last 7 years I’ve been able to save most of the videos I’ve shot on hard drives, the trick has just been tracking them down. I could do a whole other post on the difficulty of keeping all of your media accessible, and even another post on the advancement of digital media and the headache of transferring video into one unified format – that’s for another day.

In the back of my mind was this idea that whenever I was to ask Claire to marry me I would then start editing a video that I would surprise her with at our wedding. Here alone was the biggest difficulty. It is not easy to keep a secret from the person who knows you best, that you live with, that you share everything with. I spent hours tracking down old hard drives, finding old footage on tape, recapturing, and formatting – not to mention the time looking for music and editing. I had kept a journal near me during the whole process taking notes whenever they came to mind – Luckily, having an idea journal near me is normal and was never questioned by Claire. This is where I would write down scenes I envisioned, songs that I could use, and extra footage that I remembered existed somewhere.

I can’t lie and say this video was just for Claire. In end all that really mattered is that she enjoyed it, but when I was making it I had heaps of other people in mind. Obviously I wanted my friends to like it too. The real trick was making a video that could be enjoyed by anyone. The best I could do was to tell the story of the last 7 years of our lives together, the adventures we’ve gone on, the time we’ve spent with our friends, the beautiful city we live in, and our family whom we love.

While the video may have taken me a long time to produce, it was fairly easy with such a good subject to work with. Obviously this video is dedicated to my best friend and love of my life, Claire.

I hope you enjoy the video as much as I enjoyed making it.

Now for some notes, and extras for you.

Music in the order in which it was played.

Happy by NeverShoutNever!
“17 years” by Ratatat
“Land Down Under” by Men at Work
“Great Unknown” by Watercolor
- Trying to track it down – (the Church video)
“La Del Ruso” by Gotan Project
“Scenic World” by beirut
“You and I” by Ingrid Michaelson

These are links to full videos that had clips in Claire’s video. Not everything was online, but this is a pretty good start.

The Church
Land Down Under
My Day in Under a Minute
New Years/ Birthday Haircut
A Fast Week
Paganello 2007