We did it! The three of us joined forces and documented a primary school’s winter concert tonight. Natalia manned Camera A, Sai manned Camera B, and I shot stills with my DSLR while curious parents switched between watching for their kids and watching us in action.
The concert finished a few hours ago and I’m STILL chuckling at the scenes of terrified kindergarteners, parents sighing collective “awwwwww!”s as the curtains parted, and teachers hissing at the kids to be quiet backstage. The scene is so utterly familiar to me, after countless concerts at my primary school in Winnipeg and at my BC township high school, that being there took me right back to childhood. Even 30 years later, I can recall how nervous I was to stand onstage and no matter how much practice we had there would be lines forgotten in the heat of the moment or we’d race through the words at breakneck speed.
Scores of costumed youngsters and a crowd of proud parents makes for easy filmmaking and photography — the expressions, the anticipation, the amusement is all there, natural and unprompted. You just have to run around a bit, but as events go it’s casual and doesn’t have anywhere near the pressure of a wedding.
Our plan is to make a DVD that the school can use as a fundraiser, so I can’t show any more photos. (If you’re friend or family in my Flickr list you’ll see a few in there.) We’re going to have a lot of fun editing the footage and the pictures — it’s cuteness overload! My favourite parts are the little ones in junior kindergarten performing hula dances and holding hands. I don’t even have any kids and I was beaming!
Oh, and I shot this on the way home:
Music for today: Muppets Christmas song
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