As the year draws to a close, families have more opportunities to record meaningful moments than at almost any other time, according to Greg Wasz, founder of Greg Wasz Productions. Wasz, who has spent years editing his own family’s travel and holiday footage into finished videos, says the period between late November and the start of a new year brings people together in ways that are rarely repeated. “Holidays bring people together in one place, often for the only time all year,” he says. “That alone makes it worth having a camera out.”
Wasz points out that the instinct to film tends to show up on big trips—a week in Italy or a stay at Disney—while quieter moments at home over the holidays get skipped. Yet those ordinary scenes, such as a living room on Christmas morning, a grandparent telling a story at the table, or kids arguing over a board game, often hold up just as well on screen. “People save the camera for the big trip and miss everything that happens in between,” he says. “Those in-between moments are usually the ones that matter most a few years later.”
The implication is that families who reserve video for staged events or major vacations may be missing the footage they will most want to revisit. Wasz notes that holiday gatherings often include relatives who do not appear in footage the rest of the year. Grandparents, cousins, and other family members who live far away may only be in the same room once annually, making the holiday stretch a natural point to record them simply because the opportunity will not repeat for another twelve months.
Wasz approaches his own holiday and travel footage the way he treats any project for Greg Wasz Productions: he shoots more than he thinks he needs, then edits it down later. He says the editing step is where a pile of clips becomes something a family will actually sit down and watch together. “Raw footage from a holiday is rarely interesting on its own,” he says. “It’s the editing that turns it into a story people want to watch again.” For his own family, that has meant building a habit of filming trips to places like the Maldives, California, and St. Barts alongside smaller moments at home, then combining them later into something that holds together.
Wasz suggests that the turn of the calendar is a natural point for families to change how they think about recording their own lives. Rather than recommending new equipment or a different app, he advises a shift in what gets filmed in the first place. “Start with what’s already happening instead of waiting for a big event,” he says. “A holiday dinner or a quiet afternoon at home is enough.” He adds that families do not need to film everything to end up with something worth keeping. A few minutes of real moments, captured without much planning, often outlasts footage from an event that was staged for the camera. As the year closes, Wasz says the families who end up with videos worth watching are usually the ones who started filming before they felt ready, not after they had a reason.
