Yes I did. I admit it. I bribed him with cookies because as a veteran documentary filmmaker, I knew the value of recording a child just being himself and how much that would mean to him, and his children, and his children's children in the future. Legacy is very important as it helps people know who they are. When you record a child with audio and video and let them be themselves, it becomes valuable for them to see a later point in their lives, and for the people who come after them.

But how to do this? Although he is the son of a documentary filmmaker, he did not love being videotaped. So I took him to a local coffee shop and we sat together and just fooled around together. When he looks at this video today, now that he is 16 years old, he finds it interesting but when asked, cannot remember that easy-going fun kid as he finds being a 16-year-old boy far more challenging with so many questions that make life for him at least right now, less than the easy-going fun he demonstrated in this video.

You see in the video that I also record myself and just a little bit, my relationship to him as we speak. If I ask him questions, he can ask me questions. He loved that. He still does when we sit down to talk together.

Recording young children on the ski slope, or at a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, or just posing for the camera, isn't the same thing as doing a video interview. When asking questions and answering them a child gives a sense of who they really are. What they are thinking. And when you see a child having fun in front of the camera and kidding with you as my son does in this video, you begin to get a sense of who the person is. I can't say that enough. Legacy is important. If you leave your children and the folks that come after them in your family, a vase that you bought in Italy, or money, or a photograph, within generations, those things have very little meaning. I have seen this happen time and again. But when you record meaningful dialogue which includes clear audio, the results last and I am old enough to have recorded people in my lifetime who are now showing my recordings to their grandchildren.

If this video gives any of my subscribers a sense of how they can record their loved ones, that would be satisfying to me and that is the reason that I am posting this.

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