Last year I made a short video for my parents' thirtieth wedding anniversary. I'm a university student in Surabaya, Indonesia, studying architecture, and I wanted to give them something more personal than a cake.
The idea was to make a five-minute film telling the story of their marriage. My older sister Dewi and I planned it secretly for about a month. We collected old photos from our relatives, scanned them, and then recorded short video messages from about twenty people, including uncles, aunts, my parents' old neighbours and even my father's best friend from school, who now lives in Japan and sent his clip by email. I filmed some new shots too, like the street where they first met and the small restaurant where they had their first date, which still exists.
I edited everything on my laptop using free software. The hardest part was cutting it down, because we had nearly forty minutes of material and every message felt important. I also struggled with the music, because I wanted a song my parents loved, but the sound kept being louder than people's voices, so I had to adjust it clip by clip. It took me four late nights.
When we finally showed it at the anniversary dinner, I felt incredibly nervous, but it was worth it. My father, who almost never shows emotion, had to take off his glasses and wipe his eyes. My mother asked us to play it again immediately. I felt proud, of course, but mostly I felt grateful, because in collecting those messages I learned so much about my parents that I'd never known.