The implications of filming content: capture it or just let it slip?

 Growing up in the digital age

I grew up with the Internet, or should I say, the Internet grew up with me. I was there to celebrate their first birthday. 

I was there to witness the first ever website, the first popular web browser (Netscape), the first mainstream social media platform (MySpace), and yes, as a 12/13 year old,  I was impatiently waiting for that god awful dial up tone to finally and loudly inform me that my connection to the internet had failed, and to try again later (possibly when the phone line wasn’t busy 🙄). And yes, we had a computer system that only ran in MS-DOS mode for a loooong time (Long Live Commander Keen). 

When my sisters and I were growing up, our dad was the one with the video camera out, capturing the important (and not so important) moments of our childhood and adolescence. We could have done with less footage of the Macarena, dad. I’m just saying.

He recorded our school assemblies, the living room concerts, our trips down to the Denmark farm, sports carnivals and music recitals. 

He recently finished a project uploading all of the footage from old VCR tapes to USB, so that we each had a copy. 

Our mum recorded things too, in writing mostly. She’d send letters about us girls and our shenanigans to her mum and other relatives, and she kept diaries, encouraging us to do the same when we were travelling. 

She recently found some of these relics going through old boxes and showed me what she’d written. I found it fun to read her thoughts, and find out which of us girls was causing the migraines. PS. It was all of us 🤭

Winning a radio prize, not as cool as you think

When I was 15 I won a radio competition, the prize? My first ever colour screen mobile phone the Motorola C343. This phone had a tiny display screen, sent texts, made calls and had a few games on it (Snakes of course). But it didn’t have a camera. It was still early days for that technology. 

The competition allowed you to host 10 friends as their road crew delivered the radio show “live from your lounge room!” I don’t have any photos or video from this occasion. At least not to my knowledge. If there had been any footage it would have shown a group of girls sitting around awkwardly while a radio crew attempted to hype us up. 

At the age of 15, I didn’t have 10 friends. I think I might have had 10 friends in total over the course of 15 years, but at that point in time I had maybe 3 or 4. I think only 2 of them could make it to my house that day. The rest of the group were ring-ins. 

My sisters, of course, a couple of neighbours and some girls from my French class who I think might have just felt a bit sorry for me. Who knows? 

The excitement of this event in my life was tainted by my feelings of awkwardness and social isolation. I was embarrassed that I didn’t have a solid group of mates that I  could gather for this. When I tell this story years later, I usually leave this part out. 

The story now goes, ‘Hey, I won a competition and scored a free phone.’ 

The response, ‘Hey, that’s cool.’  The end.

There’s no longer any evidence of this, only my memories. Even if social media had been a thing back then (and not just dial up modems and MSN) I’m sure that you would have just seen the highlights reel. If you didn’t know me, you would have maybe assumed that all the girls in the room were my friends and that we were having a fun experience together. If you did know me... no, you didn't.

From messing around in Capcut to amateur Content Creator

In the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to capture and create footage for two major life events for my sister. I did the content for her wedding and organised the gender reveal cake documenting people’s guesses at what the sex of her baby might be, and reaction when they cut into the cake. 

She had asked me to do both of these things and I happily accepted the jobs as it would give me an opportunity to work on my skills and, in the same breath, help my sister out, as these services are normally quite expensive. 

Ever since the wedding and the reveal I’ve been asking myself the same question. “Was it right?” Was documenting these events and preserving these moments in time for watching back, chopping up the footage, clipping together only the highlights, was it worth it? Did it add any value to the experience or just put additional pressure on the people involved? 

Behind the highlights told a different story, like back in the living room with the radio crew. There were moments of stress, awkwardness, and, what I could feel was, pressure to perform in a way that made things seem perfect on the surface. 

I love filming and editing and preserving memories with my friends and family, just like my mum and dad did and still do. I really am grateful that I get to also do this for work, even though I sometimes have conflict about it. 

Conflict of online media sharing

Many people believe that sharing on social media these days is the only and fastest way to build and engage people with your business. 

But what if the business you’re in is supporting vulnerable people? Is it in their best interest for you to show them off? Share their stories to help build your brand? How do they feel about it? 

The alternatives are, of course, not sharing anything, blurring faces, or using ai to tell stories that are similar without the complications of involving real people and their lives. I’m not going to go down that rabbit hole in this article. 

The other thing I see providers doing is leaning into the negative bias of algorithms. Negging other providers, sharing the ugly side of the NDIS, generating views by means of outrage, or “faux outrage”. 

I firmly believe that people with disabilities have the right, just like everyone else, to be seen, to have their voices heard, and the right to kindness, patience and dignity. 

How are we as service providers being respectful of that? Are we double and triple checking for consent? Not only that, are we explaining where their photos and videos will be shared and who the audience is, and the purpose of why we are filming? 

Are we respectful of people’s rights to withdraw consent? Does the person have the mental capacity to give enthusiastic consent? Are we creating more negative spaces online where people don’t feel safe?

These are all important questions. 

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I think I started this post in one place, but have quickly spiralled and taken you into the looking glass of my constant deliberation.

I’m curious to know where you land on all of this. If you’re marketing for a disability provider or other, do you share your participants online? What’s your thought process and any checks and balances you put in place for yourself and the people you support? 

Sharing on social media is a part of our lives now for better or worse, I would say that majority of people are online to varying degrees. Is it a good thing though? 

Is it better to sometimes just live our lives without trying to preserve it? If I may, I’d like to add a layer of nuance to Eminem’s song ‘Lose Yourself’

 “If you had one shot, or one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted [on film]... would you capture it? Or just let it slip?” 

Hmmm… anyways. Thoughts?