Episode 70: BONUS - Becoming A Teenage Filmmaker aka My Camcorder Days(5-26-2022)

Episode 70 is the monthly bonus episode of the podcast.
For this show we take a deep dive Back In the Day to when my desire to be a writer took a detour.  After getting my first taste of Saturday Night Live in the early 1990's I decided I wanted to create my own characters and skits.  At first it was radio shows with my Sony tape recorder, but after saving up money for months I made the big purchase of a Sears camcorder.  What followed was several years of working to be a filmmaker. 
This episode looks at why I bought my camcorder.  I also share some of the shenanigans that came from it, the moments created, the memories I treasure, and more.

Helpful Links from this Episode(available through Buzzsprout)

• Purchase Iconic Hotels and Motels of Cape Cod
• Buy Me A Coffee!
• Wear Your Wish
• DJ Williams Music
• KeeKee's Cape Cod Kitchen
• Christopher Setterlund's YouTube Channel
• Christopher Setterlund.com
• The In My Footsteps Podcast Blog

Listen to Episode 69 here.

Transcript

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Hello World, and welcome to the in my footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund. Coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 70. This is the monthly bonus episode that we do of the podcast, where I take one topic and kind of do a deep dive into it a little bit of a shorter episode. But this week's one is something I've wanted to talk about for quite a while. For family and longtime friends. This will be a very familiar subject for the rest of you. Hopefully, you'll enjoy some laughs and it won't just be inside jokes. For those of you that have listened to the podcast throughout you know that I have said that I've wanted to be a writer basically since I was in second grade. But the term writer can mean a lot of different things. It can mean author, novelist, article writer, travel blog writer, or screenplay writer slash script writer, and that's where this episode all kind of comes together. In the early 1990s, I started watching Saturday Night Live when it had the legendary cast with Phil Hartman, Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, David Spade, Dana Carvey, Chris Rock, and the idea of creating my own skits and characters and things just to that really interested me. Now, granted my sense of humor as a 12-13 year old boy was a lot different than people that wrote for Saturday Night Live, creating parody type, skits, commercials, shows, that was something that I really wanted to get into. And it didn't require a lot of writing, especially back then, it was just coming up with the most random foolish idea, usually a take-off of some show or commercial that my friends and I already knew. And then putting our own 12-13 year old, immature twist on it. Things got started in late 1990, I believe I had a Sony tape recorder. And using that, a couple of friends of mine and I, started making our own skits. I remember the original skits that we did, it was like a day in our own lives going to school and such. So we'd bump into people we knew. So not things that we could really share with most people. But I think those were just meant to amuse ourselves. I think even at the beginning with those radio skits, our intention was to make things that we could play for our families. And it's ironic because now all of these skits that I'm going to talk about in a little bit, I have uploaded using digital conversion software, and I basically just share with the family. So it's actually come full circle. I did several audio cassettes worth of skits, and commercials and game shows and talk shows like that. They never required any writing. It was basically you come up with an idea and kind of ad-lib it from there. I mean, God, we were 13-14 years old. So we weren't sophisticated in how we had it set up. But some of the stuff would really make us laugh. And it started to get creative juices flowing, at least for me, where I would think of other things to make us laugh. And things just naturally evolve. I remember I believe it was 1993. My buddy John and I, we started making audio cassettes. And he had a more elaborate setup with a nice microphone. And we could put music into the skits we were doing kind of playing it in the background. So I think we did a skit that was Wheel of Fortune, I think we did a skit that was a school dance, mindless stuff that would mean only something to us and maybe close friends and family. And at one point, we kind of took on a larger project, one of my favorite movies of all time and one of my buddy John's favorites is Back to the Future. And we would always joke that we could basically recite it back to front with no script and all that. So we decided to actually do that. We basically recorded our own version of Back to the Future it was pretty faithful to the plot. But we added our own little twists of random foolishness that freshmen in high school kids would do. I think we recorded it after school in bits and pieces. So it took us weeks to actually finish this. And we had music the Back to the Future music to it and some sound effects and such. And I did tons of voices in it. That was one of those things that I had thought for a while During this time, and in the years after that, I may have some kind of future as a voice actor doing different characters and such. So I started getting more into it than it just being an after-school hobby where I was like, what else can I do with my desire to write and create skits and any sort of minimal voice talent that I may have? The genesis came later in 1993 when my buddy John, actually, this is a true story. He borrowed a video camera from another kid that we knew in school. And the crazy thing was this kid in order for John to borrow his video camera, John had to give him video games, not let him borrow games, give them to him. I mean, talk about a kind of a dick trade. But John borrowed this video camera, and he did a couple of skits with that kid that he borrowed it from. But then when he and I did some, I think the first skit we ever did was John lives by a summer camp. And if you've listened to the podcast, you know I've mentioned a lot of times that I have an old hockey mask a glow-in-the-dark one that I painted up to look like Jason Voorhees. So combine those two together, and we did kind of a found footage thing where John was going to find Jason at this summer camp. And of course, instead of Jason being this hulking brute, he had this really high-pitched British-tinged voice. And that was the first skit we did it was just an interview with Jason. It's something that you listening to me talking about it or probably like, Oh, really, to me, I think it's funny. But to anyone who wasn't there or doesn't know, me and my sense of humor, you'd probably think it was just pretty stupid. And it probably is. I think John borrowed that camera a couple times. I think he finally got sick of giving away his video games to borrow a camera for a couple of days. But getting that first taste of actual video recording of skits, got the bug inside me. So I started saving up through most of 1994. And that July was when I bought my own video camera, I saved up with my own money and bought a video camera. And to really date myself it was from Sears. Sears. I mean, they're still kind of around a little but not really. So it was Model number 934 dot 53802391. How do I know this I've got the manual. Still, I found the old manual for my video camera, which is what gave me the idea to do this podcast. And this camera is nothing like the ones that you might see today more compact are ones that have 4k video quality. This thing was a little bit bigger than a toaster. But you could put the date on it. I think everything I filmed basically had the date in the corner, I think because I wanted to remember when it was from my own memories, had the flip-up light, it had manual and auto focus. It was very basic yet for the time it was great. I believe the camera cost me $750 in 1994. So when adjusted for inflation, it comes in at just under $1,500, which is pretty good. It's something where when you think about it, I was 16 years old and working very minimally. So to save up that much money and spend it on something that expensive. It had to be something I believed in. And I really did. Creating videos being a film director screenplay writer, these things, it was all an offshoot of that creativity that writing and creating my own world kind of brought out. And I love that camera. I had it everywhere. The funny thing is the very first skit that I ever recorded with that camera was basically making fun of the salesman from Sears which is a very 16-year-old boy thing to do. Because the salesman hadn't done anything. He was trying to kind of up sell me on different camcorders. And I'm like yeah, my budget is only this much so please stop trying to up sell a sophomore in high school. And that was kind of how the skits all started. It was just me and my friend Barry and it was here we're going to buy this camera from Sears and I'll be the salesman and that's it and there was no script. You just kind of let the mayhem flow. But I got so much mileage out I would have that camcorder. And I was very careful with it, you would think being a 16-year-old boy, at least it's a start with this video camera. Would you trust your if you have a kid that's that age, and you have something that costs, you know, say $1,500. With inflation, would you trust them to take it around on their own, that sort of like me with this camera, you wouldn't think that I'd be able to keep it intact, but I did. So besides school that became my biggest part of my life was my video camera, and creating characters and skits. I thought of it as someday I'll be a famous director and these videos would be shared in the future. Look where he started, and now look where he's at. There was a handful of us, a group of friends that were kind of my core audience. It's sort of like, Adam Sandler, has all of his usual friends and all his movies. That's kind of how it was for my video camera. Myself, my friends, John and Barry, and usually, Rob was in there. Then sometimes my brother and sisters might be in there, Rob's brothers might be in there just because they're in the background. But the mind of a 16-17-year-old kid in the 90s, it's like an acid trip. Looking at some of the skits that I don't know how we came up with them. I think a lot of them were excuses for me to try out different voices. There were ones like old sea captain who was just he lived on the street with his pet monkey, and eventually gets kidnapped by someone like the movie misery. There was you remember the TV show perfect strangers. There was a take-off of that where I was cousin bulky and I just get tortured. A lot of it was me willing to jump and fall and kind of hurt myself on camera way before jackass. I never got hurt to the point where I had to go to the hospital. But I did a lot jumping off the roof, and throwing myself down the stairs. This is legit. Now obviously skits where I was run over by a car. Those were not real. But I did a lot of stuff where I was just willing to kind of do that for laughs I think that was a big part of it, making my friends laugh, making my family laugh. That was a big part of the things that we did. Because that laughter kind of validated the things that I wanted to do. There was one character literally just called psycho monkey, who's still kind of around still but look it up. I think it was called hug gums is the name of the puppet. They're these long puppet. It's a monkey puppet. It's hard to explain it. These like when I said at the beginning inside jokes. The monkey puppet basically started off he had a talk show. And he was very R-rated swearing all the time. And he would just beat up his guests. It was funny to us. And he had a real gravelly voice, the ash dishes device. This was the voice I used. So that was kind of how he spoke and he would just yell at everyone. I did a bunch of skits with him. The irony is, and this will kind of bring it full circle. When I was first doing the getting the idea for this podcast. I needed to kind of create a test run to see how to record edit, put music in it post-production and all of that. So I actually recorded it's only like five minutes, but it's a psycho monkey podcast just called psycho monkey hates everything. And so I recorded this little podcast, edited it and sent it to family and said, you know, they all know the character. So I asked them what they thought of it mainly if it sounded good if it sounded professional. But the irony is as we come full circle, when I was able to find a VCR, this was within the last 10 years and start to play some of these tapes for my nieces and nephews. They enjoyed the cycle monkey skits so much that my nephews asked me to get a new one, and I had to go and find one on eBay and buy one of these monkey puppets so that I could make new skits just for my nice nieces and nephews. That's one of those added bonuses of doing all of these skits when I was a kid is that now the next generation of the family enjoys them. I guess it's better than them thinking they're stupid. One of the biggest parts of my videotape library that I created with this camcorder was my friends and I would make music videos. We would literally play the song on the stereo and record ourselves performing it, like what kids would do. And as you know, Nirvana was a huge influence on me my musical tastes when I was a kid. So we did a lot of Nirvana, a lot of grunge, a lot of alternative. But the irony is, now that I have this video conversion software, and I can upload and edit these old videos, and then put them on YouTube, and I have them in a folder that's private, but I can share with friends and family. The irony is I can't share any of the music videos because they would immediately get copyright strikes. So there are a couple of 100 videos that we shot that I can't even bother uploading. I'm not sure if any of you out there had growing up, I had family that had a camcorder or any sort of video recording equipment. But what I have found now, at my age looking back, is the things that are unplanned, somewhat mundane, seem to be the things that I gravitate towards. And I'm talking about, I had plenty of times that I would film around the house. So there's videos of my cats and dogs, my siblings, my mother, my stepfather, the neighborhood holidays, those are the things that I seem to gravitate towards now. I think just based on my age, the last few years with COVID and losing members of the family. I gravitate towards the feel-good moments when life was a little more innocent. And that's the thing is Back then I thought I was kind of like getting in reps learning how to film better shoot shots better. But in reality, I was capturing a moment in my life. Almost the entire Yeah, basically the entirety of my high school years will say, because obviously I don't have that camera still. So 1994 through 1997. I had, I believe 35 cassettes worth of video, somewhere in the neighborhood of 65 hours of video that I shot. So much of it is random. Some of its unusable. Some of it got recorded over some of the best skits that we made got taped over, which was a disaster. But then there's Christmases. Christmas 94, 95, 96. There are summer evenings in the neighborhood with kids playing everywhere. There's a couple where there's road trips into different towns on the Cape, seeing things that aren't there anymore. When I had this camera, if you would told me that I would rather watch a video of me sitting in the living room with my cat. Rather than those salesman skits that I said I did after I got the camera. I said no way. The salesman skits are funnier. But now as I'm in my 40s I'd rather watch my cat from 1994. But naturally, there was wear and tear on the camera. Being a teenage boy. Obviously, the thing I couldn't keep it pristine. And like I said, I shot probably 35 tapes worth of stuff. So there was going to be damage. After high school, the camera was on its last legs. I remember taking it with me. I went with my buddy Barry. We went down to North Carolina to visit our friend John at college. And we went up to I believe it was pilot mountain. I can't be sure John, if you're listening you're gonna have to let me know. So we hiked pilot mountain we didn't go up the side of the mountain. We hiked the mountain road because it was January. So I think it was closed. You couldn't drive up it. But I went up there with my camera. So it was way below freezing out in the elements. And that kind of put the camera on its last legs. I remember getting back to John's apartment, and it wouldn't work. I think I've heard thought out it worked for a little bit longer. But the last thing I ever filmed was September 1997. So you're talking heading into sophomore year of college. And it was fitting it was just mundane. My friends John and Barry and I we would go to bass hole slash grays beach and Yarmouth port. We used to go there and hang out all the time. Get snacks and such and go there after dark and just hang out and laugh. We never did anything bad there. Maybe we might have lit a few campfires, but we put them out when we left. So there were plenty of films from Bass hole of us just there laughing, the randomness. Those are the things that I miss about that part of my life. And it's like, I didn't know it at the time. And I'm sure it annoyed the hell out of my friends me with my camera. But those moments now, as we're older are the ones that I'm so glad I captured and share some of the skits that I share. I share with them in private because I don't know if they want their families to see, like their current like wives and kids to see the foolishness that we did. But for the amount of money that I spent to get that camera, it was such a great return on my investment, even though it ended up broken and thrown in the dumpster at the restaurant that I worked at, which is the truth. I kept it for about a year after it didn't work. And then it was a paperweight. So I threw it away. If you had told me in July 1994 When I was bringing that camera home after spending all of my money on it, that in little over four years, I would have thrown it in the dumpster I'd say No way. I'm not that stupid. But I took the whole video producer, screenplay writer, all that stuff. I took it seriously. I had and still have I'm looking at it right now, a three ring binder, where I wrote everything that we did for skits, names of them length, when who was in them, I really kept track of what we did. And the funny thing is now that I have the video editing software, it makes it real easy to find stuff. So I'm patting myself on the back for that. But I've got these family moments now Christmases and times that my Nana's you know, my Nan has been gone for 13 years. So to have her voice, and her face on video, these things you can't put a price tag on. So yeah, for every time that my buddy John said on camera, we film and again, it's all worth it. Now, obviously, I never became a film director. But I have become a pretty good editor. And what I mean by that is using this editing software, it's Elgato is the name of it, where you hook it into the VCR and hook it into your laptop, hit play on the VCR and the video comes up on your screen and you just record it off there. What I've been able to do is do the fully edited, fully realized version of some of the skits that I made. What I liken it to is I don't know if any of you out there have ever heard the Beatles love album. What they did was they took all these hits the Beatles had, but they spliced in bits and pieces of other songs that kind of fit in with that song. And it made almost a whole new song. What I've been able to do is take some of my old skits and splice in other things that fit that same narrative and make almost a whole new movie. For example, I told you about that Jason interview. That was the first thing that I ever recorded with John, way back in October 1993. I was able to take that and splice in other things that I did with that Jason mask which I mean Jesus. But I was able to make it into a found footage thing kind of like Blair Witch Project, like it was totally new with music and all that stuff. So even 25 years after my video camera bit the dust, I'm still putting out new content. The irony is most of those skits will never see the light of day because some of them make fun of real people so that obviously I can't do, the music videos will never see the light of day because of copyright strikes. So what I'm left with is that mundane stuff that I told you about family videos, holidays, random walking to the store or going to the golf course that I live near, things that at the time might have seemed like a waste of tape. Now one of the things that I gravitate towards, and in a world where I always talk about mental health being such a big key in life, especially in this time in the world. I find myself gravitating towards those old things that I filmed. Back when life was all ahead of me and I had all these hopes and dreams. And for a few minutes I lose myself and I'm 17-18 again. videos do that music can do That pictures can do that. Whatever it takes to bring you to your happy place. If it's not hurting anyone else, then you know, whatever. And I don't know if I could have done more with my video camera or done more with these tapes I'm looking at, I can see them from here, a whole stack of tapes because I keep digitizing everything I have. But I don't know if there was more than I could have done to kind of further my filmmaker career. But for a few years span in the mid 1990s, when I was in high school, and just after I had those dreams, that my writing dreams will take me into film. And I backed it up by spending my own money, hundreds and hundreds of dollars on a video camera that eventually ended up in the dumpster. But I'm so glad I'm so lucky and blessed that I have these memories recorded. Because those are more precious than anything getting to see us younger, like a snapshot of life. Not everyone has that I'm sure a lot of you out there, wish you had things like that. And I'm sure some of you that do, you know really enjoy and hold dearly those memories and you can see them. And that's what I think it comes down to my video camera became way more than me trying to be a filmmaker. It was a way to capture my life at the time. And I never would have imagined how much I would need that as kind of escape from the world at times currently. So I'm even more happy with my 16 year old self. And who knows if this podcast doesn't work out. Maybe I'll create a new one with the psycho monkey hates everything podcast. But thank you all for tuning in and listen to me wax poetic about my Sears video camera and the tons of hours of memories that I created with it. Hopefully it wasn't all just inside jokes. Hopefully it got you thinking about your own life at that time when you were 16 years old. But Tune in next week for episode 71. I'm going to talk about Cape Cod's Woodstock concert 50 years later, if you've never heard of that at all. It's a great story. We're going to take a road trip way up north to New London, New Hampshire. We're gonna go way way back in the day as I talk about what it was like going to the candy store and some of the super healthy treats that I used to get. There'll be a brand new top five that are all the musical acts that I wish I could have seen live. All that more coming up next week on episode 71 of the in my footsteps podcast. Go find me on social media, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Christopher setterlund.com Shoot me an email Christopher setterlund@gmail.com Visit me at Mind Body spine chiropractic and just take care of your mental health. The world can be a pretty bad place in this day and age. Like I said, I lean into these videotapes that I made I go back to the 90s a lot. Find your own happy place and lean into it. Special Happy birthday to my oldest niece Kaleigh I said I would remember I will see you soon. And to all of you that have been listening to the podcast. Thank you so very much for keeping me going. This is my happy place currently. But until next time, this has been the in my footsteps podcast. I have been Christopher Setterlund and I will talk to you all again soon.