You downhill escapades will require a different attire, then stroll in snow covered park. The dressing decisions should be based on weather, planed activity and length of time you plan to stay outside.

Dressing right for Weather First thing you need to do before you get ready, is to check weather forecast. Do not just assume that since it is nice and sunny, it will stay that way. Or that it is nice where you are going, even if it is just a short distance away. Remember, Canadian winters are quite unpredictable, and weather conditions change often without warning.

You know what weather to expect. Now you need to look at your planed activity. If your outing will include vigorous downhill skiing on double diamond trails, you will probably be much warmer then someone sitting in horse drawn sleigh.

Dressing your Children right for Weather The clothing types and styles you choose for your children, will, of course be different from once you buy for yourself. The reasons are quite simple.

Children, no matter what age they are, have a tendency to get quite wet when playing outside in snow. There is so much to do. The sledding, sliding, snow ball fights, igloo building, snow castle building, and snow angels in fresh, white, powdery stuff. Of course they get wet! What did you expect?

Here come clothing manufacturers to rescue! Researchers and developers come up with new fabrics, new insulations. They are making them warmer, greatly breathable and even waterproof. Kids can stay outside and play in snow longer, they come home dry and warm. Make sure that your kids wear gloves made with water repealing, breathable fabric. Avoid ones made with rubber lining, when kids play in snow, moisture gets inside and stays there, having no way to escape. Even if you put them in dryer, most likely they will stay wet inside, they will just smell different... and believe me, you don’t want that. Other important piece of kids winter attire is a hat. It is well known that body loses most of it’s heat through head That’s why newborn babies get those tiny, little hats to protect them form getting cold.

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Creating Great Birthday Party Videos

By Colton Wright, Digz-it.com

My son recently had his third birthday party and it was mayhem. There were kids all over place doing all sorts of funny things with parents following them around trying to prevent next catastrophe. Believe it or not, this environment makes for a fantastic video. The key is to plan a little before heading into chaos.

Sequence of Activities First think in general terms about sequence of events that go into a party. At first, all you may envision are children running around and best strategy is to sit back, and tape events as they occur from a safe, comfortable distance. After all, how can you possibly control how your video will turn out with certain anarchy that will ensue? Well, answer is to pick your spots. The ‘spots’ I’m talking about are those more creative moments you don’t want to miss.

Preparty •The birthday wish list •Sending invitations •Buying cake •Decorating •Creating goodie bags

Party Time •Friends arrive with presents •Everyone gets comfortable •Entertainment arrives •Lots of laughing, singing, dancing, kazooing (is that a word?). •Let games begin •The Birthday Procession •Now real mess: cake and ice cream •Finally, presents •The goodie bags and farewell

Perspective To really make a great birthday video, be creative and think about world through a child’s eyes for a moment. Kids get excited for a reason. They have all their friends over, most rules go out door, and there are games, cake, ice cream, and presents; what else could make a child more excited? On top of this, your child is right in middle of it all, loosing their breath trying to keep track of who’s doing what, where, how and why. The goal is to capture that excitement, and it doesn’t mean standing in corner, towering 6 feet over scene panning back and forth with a wide angle lens filming. You’re going to have to do some extreme filming for a few minutes and get down in action.

Walk Through Now let’s get creative. What I would like to do is walk through party and give you some examples of creative camera work that will make your videos more exciting to film, edit and share. I don’t expect you to use all of these ideas in one video, but using just a few will improve your storytelling dramatically.

Preparty taping Taping all preparty items will probably only take less than 10 minutes in total but this video will come in handy when editing. These moments are difficult to plan, so an idea is to keep your video camera fully charged and in an easy to reach spot. This way when discussion of what they want for their birthday comes up, you’ll be able to capture moment quickly.

The preparty video you tape will be good flashback material. For example, as you tape your child opening their favorite present, you may want to include a brief flashback to when they initially told you what they wanted and how bad they wanted it. Flashbacks can also be used to show before and after shots of cake or your home before and after destruction.

The Party One of best techniques to make your final video more interesting is to create a few scenes where viewer experiences party from child’s perspective. These are commonly called point of view shots. This involves getting down to their level, literally.

Friends arrive with presents This is a great opportunity for capturing some interesting conversations between children as they arrive. Try to get your son or daughter to greet first few arrivals. Kneel down and tape over their shoulder so that person they are speaking to takes up maybe 2/3 of frame. For effect, it should be filmed from height of kids. For a more dramatic, meeting of minds, effect, move camera around so that it is looking slightly up at two as they talk. Or, start over shoulder of one of subjects and move around to shoulder of other.