AI VHS home videos: dad is filming the cake again

• Low detail and soft colour hide the tiny flaws AI video still makes.
• The voice is behind the camera, so there's no lip sync.
• Everyone has a family tape like this, or wishes they did.
• Period objects tell the joke on their own: a road map the size of a table, a stack of CDs, a phone with buttons.

@camcorder_dad is home movies from 1994 to 2008, filmed by a dad who is sure about everything and right about nothing. He films a picnic with two camcorders, explains why nobody will ever want a phone without buttons, and plans a road trip on a map that takes up the whole car. Titles are the questions a kid would ask watching it back: “why does Dad need all those CDs?”, “would you buy a phone without buttons?”.

• Name the year. “Summer 1998” gets you the right clothes, cars and colours.
• Say it's handheld and shot on a home camcorder.
• Keep the person filming off screen and give them the lines.
• Skip readable text. Dates burned into the corner tend to come out garbled; say the year in the idea instead.

• 1990s home camcorder footage, summer 1997: a dad films his family's new computer and explains, very confidently, that nobody will ever need more than one floppy disk.

  Make this

• VHS home video, 2003 birthday party: dad zooms in and out on the cake for far too long while the candles burn down and the kids wait.

  Make this

• Handheld camcorder, 1995 road trip: dad unfolds a road map so big it covers the whole windscreen while the family sits in a car park.

  Make this