“Dad, I want the Transformer Rescue Super Hero!”

“Dad, I want the Batman flying car!”

It seems “Dad, I want .. Dad, I want .. Dad, I want..” is all we will here for the next 7 weeks.

So here’s how we handle the neverending wish list: we “email photos to Santa.”

This weekend we took our son to the mall and let him go nuts. We took pictures of all the things he wanted so that we could email the photos to Santa. In truth, it’s a saved reminder on our iPhone of the things he wants and they’re also easy to email to Nana and Grandpapa to show exactly what he wants.

BUT .. it’s not all about what he wants. We use the time to ask him what other people would want too. He picks out gloves that Santa should get for Mama. A book Santa should get for Daddy. A play doh set Santa should get for his big brother. And then we ask him about the girls and boys who don’t have a lot of toys. What would they want? And he goes through the stores picking out things for other people.

Everything is accounted for on our phone for later research on who will have the best price and when “Santa” should do his shopping. It’s one crazy day where we get the “list” out of the way so the “I want, I want, I want” disappears for the rest of the season.

How do you handle the holiday shopping season with your kids?

Perhaps this could be why, since I became a father just over a year ago, my video camera is always charged, holstered and ready to shoot.

My favourite subject, of course, being my beautiful little boy, London. And I had a lot more time to shoot footage of him after I lost my full-time reporting gig earlier this year (I now work as a freelance music writer with the Vancouver Sun and have a few screenwriting projects in development).

Anyway, this is a great time for amateur filmmaking, because technology has made it so easy to capture memories.

You can, of course, simply shoot and archive the memories. But it’s also a lot of fun (and, for me, creatively fulfilling) to shoot and edit stories documenting a day out, a weekend away or an entire year, which is what I did with my short film, ONE.

Obviously, kids don’t give you a lot of warning before they do something cute, which means sometimes you just have to point and shoot and hope you got it. So you might not always have time to setup that perfect shot. Then again, sometimes it just pays to be in the right spot and the right time.

Still, there are some tricks and tips you can take advantage of in order to make more memorable videos:

1. Shoot lots: With the advancement in ACVHD consumer cameras that use memory cards and internal hard drives to record HD video, proud parents no longer have to worry about blowing through all their pricey DV tape stock. So shoot lots and experiment with different angles. Then pick the best shot or shots and delete the ones that aren’t up to your standards.

(Keep in mind that, if you’re shooting ACVHD video, you’ll need a computer that can handle HD footage, a lot of storage space and editing software capable of handling ACVHD footage.)

2. Zoom: Unless you’re a pro videographer, don’t use it. If you use it to frame your shots tighter, make sure your electronic stabilization is engaged, or use a tripod. Nobody likes watching shaky camera work, unless you’ve filmed a close encounter of the third kind or some kind of natural disaster. Better to move towards your subject than zoom towards it. If you do zoom in towards something, try and make it as smooth as possible, or edit the zooming motion out and cut straight to the close up.

3. Framing: Obviously, framing can make a shot. Try not to have floating heads or cut people off at the forehead. If you’re familiar with photography’s rule of thirds, it’s a good one to implement with video too. Some people just know how to frame interesting shots, others don’t.

4. Sound: Audio is always an issue when shooting video. The onboard microphones on cameras have come along way, but they pick up a lot or peripheral noise. However, for most consumer shooting, they do the trick. If you want something better, pick of a Rode VideoMic. At just over $100, they’re reasonable, and they’re great for picking up the kids (or whatever else you’re pointing the camera at) and cutting out annoying clatter.

5. Editing: Video editing software can be frustrating to learn, but some of the more popular ones, like iMovie or Final Cut Studio are fairly basic to use. Just remember to save your work, often.

6. Music: It’s nice to put music to video. I cut ONE to my friend’s song, the artist Kingsway, with permission. You can use popular artists, too, but keep in mind that if you post the videos to a public forum, such as Facebook, it will be taken down for Copyright infringement.

Happy shooting!

Equipment

Here’s what I used to shoot the short film, ONE:

A Canon Vixia HF-10 HD camera. It’s a consumer camera, shoots full 1080p HD (ACVHD) and has three different frame rates, 60i (interlaced/normal); as well as 24p and 30p. The “p” stands for “progressive”. This means the images it captures are not interlaced.

Anyway, I stick to 30p – 24p can give more of a film look but it’s not as good for quick movements and is more challenging to upload it into editing software. With 30p, I just plug the camera into my Mac and upload into Final Cut.

(A great site to compare video cameras is CamcorderInfo.com)

My Mac: A 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2GB 800 Mhz DDR2 SDRAM with a 23-inch screen. It came with a 350 GB hard drive and also have a 1 TB Firewire drive that I use strictly for storing video.

Final Cut Pro – It’s costly and, for a hobbyist, the cheaper Final Cut Studio and even iMovie will be sufficient.

Magic Bullet – I like to fool around with various filters to give my videos a more film-like feel. Magic Bullet uses templates so you can check out how each one will affect the video. There are lots to choose from so you can either pick one to set a tone or, like I did in ONE, use many different kinds.

About the Author: Graeme McRanor is a freelance music writer and screenwriter. He lives with his son, London, in Gastown. You can follow him @graememcranor

Car seat installation manuals are beasts when it comes to navigating the correct way to install a car seat. Goofy drawings that make Ikea manuals easy. Toss in acronyms and long drawn out directions and it’s tougher for a man to get through than one of his wife’s Shopaholic books.

Car seat installation videos, on the other hand, make life easier. I can see it from different angles, they can talk me through it, I can follow along with the manual. I can stop, rewind, watch it again. If they have videos showing us how to put on airplane seatbelts, there needs to be manufacturer videos for car seat installation.

I’m currently reviewing the Safety 1st Air Protect from Dorel. The manual is like any other manual – tough. They have videos on their website touting the seat’s safety, but not for installation.

I believe the manufacturer needs to be more obvious about these videos and include a dvd in the box, or a clear link to a website with a YouTube video showing me someone doing it properly.

4 out of 5 parents don’t know how to correctly install a car seat. 80%. The car seat can be as solid as a brick wall and as light and cushiony as angel wings, but if I don’t install it properly it’s not going to work.

Car seat installation is the most important part of car seat safety.

Here are some useful car seat installation resources:

BCAA’s Traffic Safety Foundation, with ICBC, has developed a comprehensive Child Passenger Safety Program. It includes a Toll-free Child Car Seat information line: 1-877-247-5551 and car seat clinics.

Carseatsite.com has a comprehensive list of car seat installation videos, some of them even for specific manufacturers.

Dorel, the Safety 1st Air Protect manufacturer, partnered with CanadianFamily.ca to create a video about installation basics.

This post is part of a series encompassing Car Seat 101.

[Disclosure: Safety 1st gave us a car seat to keep and review. They are not involved in the editorial related to our review and are not a direct sponsor of DadCAMP.]