Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I Made You a Music Video

How small habits and one old tape became a fast, meaningful gift.

It’s been a chaotic month. Graduations. A family emergency. A lot of expected and unexpected curveballs.

And I am not a fast person.

My mom was fast—four-foot-ten and constantly in motion. Dad? Not so much. He ambled. You’ll see in a minute.

I’m more like Dad. I prefer his pace.

But here’s what I’ve realized: with enough prep, even a slow walker can move fast when it counts.

That’s how I ended up making a Father’s Day music video this morning—in just a couple hours. And no, I’m not one of those tech geniuses who knocks out masterpieces before breakfast. I made it fast because I’d already done the slow work, in bits and pieces, over time.

The video itself started out as six minutes of shaky, digitized footage from an old Hi8 tape. My daughter was holding the camera—bless her squirmy third-grade heart. The quality is low. The lighting is worse. But it’s the only video we have of my dad. It’s the only place we have his voice. (And of course the original is saved in the archives in its full original glory.)

That made it precious.

And that made it a perfect candidate for a little experiment:

Could I turn it into something meaningful—fast?

Could I zoom like my mother, even though I prefer to meander?

The answer turned out to be yes—but only because I’d been quietly preparing. Over months. Without knowing it.

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What Helped Me Make It Fast (Even Though I’m Not)

1. Templates save your future self.

I keep templates for all kinds of things now: writing, video structure, prompts I use with ChatGPT, even little checklists for “How I did this last time.” It’s not fancy. I just stick them in a single folder so I can find them again.

When you’re working under pressure—or just tired—templates let you skip the blank page panic. You’re not starting from scratch. You’re starting from something.

2. Cheat sheets are better than memory.

Because you will forget what export setting finally worked last time. Or what AI tool gave you fewer weird hallucinations. Or how you reduced background noise without killing all the ambient sound.

So I make notes. Short notes! (I had to work on that. I like to go on and on, and then when I go back to read later, I’m like, Nancy, what WERE you thinking?) They should be just long enough to jog my memory. And now I can go faster, because I don’t have to re-learn what I already learned.

3. Work in small pieces. Then keep the pieces.

I didn’t do all the audio cleanup for this video at once. I played with it for ten minutes here and there over the course of a month. At the time, I wasn’t even sure how I’d use the tape. But when I needed it, there it was: prepped and waiting. The same goes for the music. First I worked on the lyrics. Then I worked on the song.

You don’t have to finish everything you start. Just finish parts, and save them. The rest might come together later—faster than you expect.

4. Practice quietly. The payoff will be loud.

This project wasn’t really fast. It only looked fast because I’d been building skills slowly. I’d learned just enough video editing. Just enough audio cleanup. I’d written song lyrics before. I’d played with AI music tools.

So when I needed to move quickly, I could.

Want to do this kind of thing later? Start dabbling now. A few minutes a week is enough to build confidence. (I call it “focused dabbling,” really, because you want to dabble in one place long enough to get familiar before you go off chasing some other shiny thing.)

5. Forget perfect. Go for meaningful.

The final video isn’t slick. I changed my mind about the transitions several times. Professionals would tell you they’re all wrong. The footage shakes. It’s amateur. But it has my daughter’s voice. My son’s Nintendo. My dad’s hat. His house. His car with that siding that peeled off like tree bark. It has a feeling.

No one in my family cares if it’s polished. They care that it exists.

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Want to Try It?

If you’ve got an old family video—low quality, minimal audio, weird lighting—that might be the perfect starting point.

Here’s what you need to know how to do:

• Clean the sound a little (but keep the good ambient stuff: car doors, distant voices, laughter)

• Trim the video down to fit a song’s length

• Add a music track (something meaningful to you—or make your own, like I did)

• Export and share

If you want to experiment with AI music, I used Suno for this one. I wrote my own lyrics, but you don’t have to. ChatGPT can help. So can Suno itself. But even if you skip the music part, just turning an old tape into a short watchable video is powerful.

You don’t need to be fast. You just need to start saving your pieces.

When the moment comes, you’ll be ready to move.

If you try making your own “VH1-style” family video—or if you’ve already made something like this—I’d love to see it.

Drop a link in the comments or send me a note. These kinds of projects deserve an audience, even if it’s small.

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A Last Note About My Dad

Watching that old tape again, I was struck by how he wobbled when he walked. Did I not notice it then? I think his age just snuck up on me.

There’s a moment where he’s standing in his sweater, with his hat, looking out at the playground. Not saying a word.

But you can still see who he was, the way he held himself and took things in.

You forget those details until you see them again. That’s why the video matters. Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

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