Traditions: Recording Your Family’s Moments and Memories on Film

me • arts & entertainment • family fun • activities

by Mom It Forward on September 23rd, 2011 | No Comments »

Traditions—I'm the type of person who pulls out our simple point-and-shoot camcorder maybe once a year. As far as making family films, I'm just not creative that way. I'm sure there are many of you out there who are and have great videos or blogs to show it. I recently came across a post about one such family, who puts a whole new twist on family film making. The Mansbach family takes it to a new level, with costumes, acting, special effects, and editing, and says it provides not only a great medium for family bonding, but also a unique method of recording their two kids' childhoods that the parents' didn't have when they were growing up.

On FreshTakes.msn.com, a site built around the sharing of videos about family traditions, the Mansbach's talk about the evolution of their family film making endeavors. It didn't start out as the epic adventure it is now, with everyone being a bit camera-shy and time being scarce. But with the discovery of unique special effects like these and of the latent creative juices flowing in the minds of their young ones came the desire to take advantage of that for fun. The father Johnny, mother Jenny, son Jeremy and daughter Jenna have made short films about a boy exploding into dirt, hide-and-seek gone wrong, and attack of the "glass ninjas." They share their homemade movies with the world via YouTube. They even have their own premiere parties with friends to debut their creations.

"Filming these movies as a family is great because we all pitch in, we're all sharing ideas, we can be as silly as we want to be," says Jenny. I'm inspired by the Mansbach's to dust off our camcorder and let our creative juices flow.