home video fun

I bought a video camera this week, as a present to myself in celebration of my 30th birthday (which is tomorrow, fact fans) and have spent the last few days trailing around with it, looking and hoping for things to film. On Saturday Andrew celebrated five years of living in Brighton and held a small party at his flat, so I took the camera along and passed it around so that my friends and I could capture elements of the (very enjoyable) evening. Until last night I didn't look back at the recording, but yesterday evening I plugged it into the television and watched close to an hour of fragmented, random and mostly rather boring footage of myself and my friends listening to music, playing guitar, talking and taking some fairly wild stabs at Andrew's dartboard.

There are some nice clips, actually - a few of us taking turns to bounce down the hallway on the space hopper which Anne-Sophie got Andrew last year, some moments where Vic digs out an old photo album and talks me through some childhood photographs. At another point, myself and Dan have plugged in a little drum-machine/keyboard tool of Andrew's and are constructing an avalanche of glitchy rhythms over Joy Division's 'Transmission', which is playing on the stereo. I remember quite clearly at the time feeling that we were making some decent, if chaotic, noises, so it's chastening to see in retrospect that the sound was deeply irritating.

Actually, chastening is a very accurate term for the whole experience; it's just so odd watching yourself drunk with your friends, especially when you're in an environment where people don't so much converse as yell things occasionally at each other. I'm sure if I had a recording of myself having a serious discussion with someone after a few beers, I'd find it equally embarrassing, but at least I might say something interesting. I was shocked to see how many moronic statements I came up with over the space of 56 minutes of film. Moronic statements and bad jokes.

Of course, I'm not the only one (although perhaps the worst) and it's equally clear that people were enjoying themselves. My friends, on film - and in real life - are lovely. And, of course, we all hate our reflections sometimes, and I can, if I think about, see that I have good points, too - I'm affectionate, high spirited, involved. All the same, I think I much prefer the more reflective version of myself than the party animal! Perhaps I shall arm myself - at the next party - with some cue-cards; clever things to say and do.

Or, I might just have a sit down and edit the film, judiciously, so that it makes me look brilliant.