Inside the Home Mode

Abstract

Despite their occasional pretensions to more ambitious forms of video production, the advice manuals and consumer magazines examined in the last chapter implicitly recognise that, for most people, video is primarily a means of recording family life. In The Camcorder Handbook (1992) Malcolm Squires writes:

Perhaps one of the most enjoyable uses to which you can put the camcorder is making an ongoing record of your family. You can include all sorts of activities, depending on what you like to do as a family. In this way you will also build up a permanent record of your children as they grow and develop over the years. (p.102)

This chapter focuses on the practices of camcorder users who do little more with their cameras than video their family and friends. Richard Chalfen (1982) uses the term ‘home mode’ to refer to the amateur photographer’s or film-maker’s representation of the private world of the family (see Chapter 2). The category of home mode video footage comprises the kind of material made, if not necessarily within the home, then dealing primarily with ‘the home’, the domestic and the familial. Such material tends to be thought of as ‘private’ and as such, its significance closely resembles that of the traditional family photo album.