From an early age, there was something magnetic about cameras. My Father filled the role of videographer for most of my life, but as I became older and responsible enough to operate, it was all that I wanted to do. I consider myself very fortunate to have a healthy library of footage documenting various moments of my childhood (and adulthood). Sure, the resolution snob within me wishes that it had been captured in Super 8mm, but VHS, Hi8, and eventually MiniDV were certainly better than nothing! The sprawling volumes (and many hours) of Pearlman Home Videos started just a few years before my birth and sporadically appear in different forms to this day (funny how cell phones shoot HD now).
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After years of discussion, my Father and I spent several days digitizing all of our footage during Thanksgiving of 2009. It was an arduous process considering the age of the tapes, having to track down a Hi8 camcorder on Craigslist because ours had died, and dealing with all of the time code breaks and random issues in the ingestion process. However, having all of our memories in instantly accesible Quicktime form on hard drives was well worth the effort. For the first time, we were allowed to shuttle through the footage and find exactly what we wanted to watch because my Dad (wisely) prohibited us from Fast Forwarding the tapes to maintain their fidelity.
For the most part, the gigabytes of clips are sitting dormant on hard drives. Over the years, I’ve carved out time from my schedule to sift through the footage and find nuggets with the hopes that I’ll weave a narrative together from the heaps of film. When I was in college, I had a blast going through the hours of incriminating stock that I had shot with my friends in high school. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was training my eye and hand held skills from an early age by documenting the mundane details of high school partying in the suburbs of Boston. There were several years of my life where my camcorder was attached to my hand. It was something of an appendage and I genuinely believe it has aided my current abilities. The stakes were high: if you missed a friend’s embarrassing moment, then you couldn’t recreate it artificially. To protect the innocent, I’m not planning to publicly post my “best of high school” short, but I’m proud to share a little video I put together for Shana, my first love.
On May 16, 2011, our veterinarian advised the Pearlman family to put our beloved standard poodle to sleep. It was very difficult news to receive, but she lived an amazing life and her health had been failing of late. Her vision and hearing were practically gone and watching her limp around pained us all. Nevertheless, she meant the world to me (and my family) and these things are never easy. Shana came into my life late in 1996 as I began my freshman year of High School. I wanted to be her primary care giver and make the unpleasant sacrifices that come along with a puppy even though I was adjusting to the arduous work load of my scholastic endeavors (and a new school). Her kennel was in my room, which meant that my highly prized sleep was interrupted and cut short by her weak bladder (don’t forget, I was still growing and sleep was an integral ingredient). When I wasn’t at school or studying, I spent much of my free time playing with my puppy and filming our times together.
As part of the mourning process, I revisited the footage.
The power of the moving image is something that we, as filmmakers, exploit on a daily basis. Obviously there are different ramifications when working in the non-fiction realm, which become even more personal when dealing with your own life and experiences. Seeing her on my screen as a puppy battling the epic snow storms moved me both to tears and laughter. I wanted to share the footage with those whose lives Shana has touched. At the risk of sounding like one of those crazy pet owners, I acknowledge that she was just a dog. No, she didn’t spend her days searching for a cure to cancer, but she put a smile on the face of most everyone with which she came into contact. I hope you enjoy this little tribute.
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