Melody Joy

It’s been on my mind and heart to teach the art of Family Filmmaking for a while now. I’m constantly scribbling in notebooks, devising methods of how I can teach the technical skills and perspectives necessary for emotive films, and pulling together drafts of how to teach creatives the business skills necessary to make a sustainable and fulfilling business. But there was one thing that just kept getting in the way: myself.

I kept thinking I wasn’t worthy enough, I wasn’t skilled enough, I just wasn’t enough. How could I teach filmmaking as a business when I struggled so hard through 2020? Well, 2020 was hard for everyone and for an in-home business demonstrating the beauty of life at a time when the world is in crisis and most people are trying to survive each day, the pandemic unmistakably had an enormous impact on my ability to grow as a business. I wasn’t giving myself enough grace because I thought if I just found the one thing that I was doing wrong everything would fall into place. COVID can’t be “fixed” and it is going to take time for our world and the people in it to function well again.

Once I accepted that I am enough and that I have something valuable to offer the world, I still had to figure out how I was going to do that. Often times, people struggle to see the beauty right in front of them because the little details that we want to remember 10 years from now feel mundane and repetitive in the moment. Lifestyle &/or documentary photographers are skilled at spotting these everyday treasures already. They’re my people! They already have the necessary foundations to create family films. If I teach them how to create their own, they can practice with their own families during the remainder of quarantine and then they will be ready to rock and bring this to clients when restrictions lift. I’m only one person who can serve a limited number of families, but if I empower others with the skills and knowledge that I have we can make a much bigger impact together. If there is one thing we have all learned during this time it’s the importance of family. Families will be looking to preserve what their love feels like through film.

Why do I keep coming back to family films? Filmmaking has given me the gift of preserving memories that I want to look back on when my kids are grown and remember all of the little details that my brain doesn’t retain. More importantly, my kids will remember this as a time when we were surrounded by love and connection. I made this film from a mish-mash of scenes I filmed during quarantine (and some before) as a gift to my children, to pass down all of the things that this stage of life has taught me.

If I can help other families preserve their love through films, I NEED to put aside my insecurities and just find a way to do it! I started “Images of Joy” to start the discussion, to reach the people I can share this gift with, and it had to start with the courage to accept myself as I am.

Thank you for everyone who has supported the me over the past few days. It’s given me so much encouragement to keep up the momentum. I know it’s not easy to navigate Apple Podcasts and it stinks that it’s only available on Apple devices. This is just the beginning! It will push out to other podcasting platforms soon. I hope that you are able to join in the journey and preserve your images of joy.

As a biology major, color fascinated me. Neuroscience can describe how color is received into the brain: specific wavelengths of light are refracted onto the retina where rods and cones send neural signals to the primary visual cortex, with a whole lot more detail in each one of those steps than anyone wants to read in this story. Scientists can even tell you all sorts of research about how colors play into our cognition and memory. My son may have synesthesia, a joining of the senses, in which he associates colors with certain smells. Really, this nerdy stuff is so amazing! But you know the most incredible part of color? It only exists as a perception. It’s not really there and it can be experienced differently by different people.

If a person with total color-blindness can’t see this concept we call color, it doesn’t really exist and therefore doesn’t have meaning…right? With the understanding that philosophical arguments don’t have right or wrong answers, I’m going to do my best to tell you why I think that color has a lot of meaning. 

When you strip color away from a film, you also strip away part of the realness of that memory. Artistically this can serve a purpose when you want to draw the viewers attention to a specific item, expression, or dramatically lit scene. I used this technique when I volunteered for Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep, an organization providing the gift of remembrance photos to parents who will never get to bring their baby home from the hospital. All of the images created were in black and white to help the parents focus on the love for their child, and less on the pain and realness of remembering the loss.

In family filmmaking, color plays a crucial role when you want to portray the full depth of a memory. It makes it feel more real, almost tangible. It’s as close to reliving the moment that you can possibly get. Color creates an important link between our memories and emotions. THAT, I would argue, means that color also holds a lot of meaning.

You may be wondering…why oh why did I then make half of a film in black and white? The answer, of course, lies within another story.

The discussion of skin color is a hot topic, and I have found it incredibly difficult to speak up about my thoughts without fear of saying something wrong. At the same time, silence has not felt like the right solution either. The lack of discussion leading up to recent events is the primary reason our culture is in this position right now. The best way I can find to express myself is through my art. I asked this family specifically if they would do a session with a purpose. Their family is made up of different colors, yet the experiences that they have are so relatable to any family. Without color and with color, the film expresses the same love and joy. We can’t change skin color, but what would happen if we changed our perception of its meaning? What if the presence of varied skin tones brought vibrancy to life in the visual esthetic of our uniqueness? What if we saw color as nothing other than a pigment, an ancestry, a beautiful history of people who lived, laughed, and loved? I don’t want to ignore color. I want to embrace it.

Wing Wing’s Story

We thought about homeschooling our children but were always tentative about whether or not we could actually make it happen. Well, there is nothing quite like covid to give us a kick in the pants to just try it. We started off the year with an exciting activity that my husband and I have not done since we were in elementary school: we cared for a monarch. From caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly, the kids (and mom and dad) checked on Milky every day. One night her chrysalis turned black and the next morning she emerged. It didn’t even occur to me until halfway through her re-birth day the significance of that date. She spread her wings for the first time on August 31st, a day that we should be celebrating my brother Joe’s birthday but instead we are still processing the grief of his passing 7 years ago.

This film is a tribute to my brother and the loved ones we’ve lost in our family. Joe was the last in our lineage. Although the Felton name will no longer be passed on I will not let it be forgotten. I took a picture of a plate he signed at our wedding and created the “Felton” graphics from his handwriting. He included the railroad tracks because he was a road kid who hopped trains and hitched rides to travel the country with his dog. I soaked in every detail of this butterfly’s beauty, remembering what a gentle and caring soul my brother was and knowing that he is now flying free too.

Pam’s Story

Every family has a story that deserves to be remembered. Many people take out their cameras like crazy when the kids are little and as the years go on family photos become less and less common. A 60th birthday is just as important as the first. While celebrating Pam on this day, it really struck me how much I could connect to the stories her mother told.

To her grandkids she is known as “Bubee”, to Pam she is known as “Mom”. She drew me right into her storytelling throughout the day as she made people laugh in ways that no one else could, and when it came time for the gifts I was blown away. The thoughtfulness behind each item reminded me of how my own mom finds gifts for their meaning far more than monetary value. The most powerful one from Bubee was a hat that Pam’s grandmother wore to her wedding. Her gentle spirit and loving nature reminded me so much of me Meme, and when she shared the story of Pam’s birth like it was just the other day I reconnected to my children’s birth stories.

Seeing life unfold across the generations struck me in a really powerful way. All in one day we talked about birth, life, and those who are no longer with us. It made me look backward and forward in time, remembering my own experiences and wondering what I have yet to explore.

Take a glimpse into their story…

Vanessa & Brendan’s Story

Love permeates all stages of life. As a midwife, Vanessa brings her loving voice and healing energy to moms while they go through a time of intense pain and even greater joy – the birth of their baby. She carries with her the unfathomably immense love of God that is evident through the work of her hands and the gifts of compassion and comfort that she brings to others. With her clients and with her family, love is the center of it all.

Love. It is such a small word with so much meaning. It is a feeling, an action, an embodiment of God living among us. While guiding Vanessa and Brendan through writing the script for their film, this word became central to everything we wrote together. In writing a message to their children, they undoubtedly knew that the love of Christ is the foundation upon which their family is built, and it is the reflection of that love in us that brings so much beauty into the world.

Take a glimpse into their story…