What To Do With All Those iPhone Videos: KidVidsNYC

One of the things that stresses me out most as a mom, is, I have recently discovered, quite common amongst my peers. And it has nothing to do with sleep training, healthy habits, or discipline. It can be summed up in the following quote, a variation of which is uttered by every mom I know soon after she places her phone back on her pocket after memorializing some adorable moment with a quick video: "What the F am I ever going to do with all the cute videos I have amassed on my phone?!".  I have nightmares of all the memories- both major and minor- somehow disappearing into the abyss of a cloud somewhere, never to be seen again. And even if they don't disappear, they will be so random, out of order and hard to find, how on earth will I ever be able to actually enjoy them?

In a desperate attempt to control the chaos, I created more confusion- backing up videos all over the place so nothing was synced up, creating iPhoto folders that ended up jumbled, failed attempts at figuring out how to transfer said videos into iMovie, and then YouTube, and then whatever other video service of the moment happened to cross my path promising to help corral our family's memories in some sort of organized fashion only to subsequently disappear months later (ah, the life of a start up.)

So, when I came across KidVidsNYC, a family video preservation company, I swear I heard angels sing. Nicole Maller Savariego, the Founder and Creative Director (and a mom herself) got back to me within hours and held my hand through the entire process of transferring the videos from my phone and computer over to hers. Then, without much back and forth at all, she was able to perfectly assess the most crucial moments to capture with sound so we could hear Alexa's adorable voice and silly saying,  the smaller moments that could be sped up and set completely to music (she also happened to make spot-on music choices, without me even having to give direction- huge plus!) and used the date codes on each video to put them in chronological order with "chapter" breaks for each year. Here is a snippet from Alexa's video in case you want to check out how talented Nicole is and/or how freaking cute my daughter is- and you can also see the company's demo reel on their website.

You can choose from 3 packages, and the turnaround time is minimal- anywhere from a few days to three weeks. My project was a lofty one- taking 4 years of sloppily shot and poorly lit quick clips and putting them into one 60 minute compilation.

Now, armed with a DVD and a downloadable link of my little lady's major and minor milestones from 2011 to now, I sleep much more soundly. Well, except for that newborn in the room next door... But hey, at least I know all those videos I am taking of Goldie's silly faces and blood-curdling cries won't go to waste, right?