One of the mental blocks I often have for doing creative things is that I don't want them to suck. This isn't so much an issue of having low self-esteem, but more of an acknowledgement that good creative work takes a lot of time.
Shooting "film" in a high quality fashion is exactly one of those situations that takes time. If you want an image to really look good, you have to light it correctly, and without it looking like you had to light it. But whatever, I wanted to shoot some video of my kid because I want video of my kid. That meant breaking out the camera and shooting without a tripod, under little to no lighting, and dealing with whatever I got. Then I had the bright idea of setting it to music, if I had enough material.
"Baby Cloud" is a wonderful lullaby by Caspar Babypants, a.k.a., Chris Ballew, also known as the front man for the Presidents of The United States of America. You know, "Peaches" and "Lump" and what not. It turns out his kid music is brilliant, and we witnessed first hand the preschool mosh pits that ensued at his free shows around Seattle. This particular song always resonated with me as a future love letter to your child... the idea that you want them to be safe and protected, but you'll let them go when it's time. The vocal by Rachel Loshak very sweetly conveys that sentiment. I remember driving up Snoqualmie Parkway with it on in the car, Simon sleeping in the back, and thinking, "This would make for a great music video of him doing kid stuff."
So despite the video being kind of amateurish, poorly exposed and noisy from low light situations, I figured I'd cut it anyway. There are some edits that I don't like, but I'm happy to have an evening with Simon on record. I emailed Chris (Mr. Babypants?) and asked if it was OK to post online, and he said absolutely. He liked it so much that he wanted to add it to his official YouTube channel, which is OK with me. I'm honored that he liked it!
So here's a couple of hours after dinner with Simon on a typical day, edited down to a little over two minutes.
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