Camcorder Day

What the day is

Camcorder Day is observed on January 20. The camcorder combined a camera and a recorder in one hand-held unit, which sounds obvious now and was the entire innovation.

Origin and background

Before it, portable video meant two pieces of equipment: a camera connected by cable to a separate recording deck carried on a shoulder strap or a trolley. That arrangement was heavy, awkward and effectively limited to professionals. The single-unit designs that arrived in 1983 and the smaller formats that followed collapsed all of it into something one person could hold and afford.

The domestic consequence was the obvious one. Ordinary life became recorded, in enormous quantity, by people with no training, and the aesthetic of the home video, shaky, badly lit, too long, is now a recognizable genre in its own right.

The consequence nobody planned was civic. Once a meaningful share of households owned a device that recorded moving images, events began to be documented by whoever happened to be present rather than by whoever had been sent. The footage of the Rodney King beating in 1991 was recorded by a bystander on a camcorder from his balcony, and it changed what could be argued about in public because it existed. That capacity, ordinary people holding a recording device at an unplanned moment, began with this format and is now simply assumed.

The camcorder was then eliminated by the phone, which does the same job and is already in the pocket.

It leaves a practical problem worth acting on. Magnetic tape degrades, binders break down, and the machines needed to play the old formats are increasingly scarce and unrepairable. Family tapes sitting in a loft have a limited window in which they can still be transferred.

How to take part

• Find the old family tapes and get them digitized. This is the actionable part.
• Label what you transfer, including who is in it, while somebody still knows.
• Store the digital copies in two places, since one drive is not a backup.
• Record something ordinary rather than only occasions. The everyday footage is what people later want.
• Watch an old tape with the person who shot it.