I recorded one second of every day in 2017 that resulted in a video montage of my everyday life over the course of a year. To add a little surprise element, I didn’t even tell anyone what I was doing. My family just thought I was super in to documenting videos for the year. When Jared saw the final video he said, “That’s why you were taking all those videos?!”

I used the 1SE app to mash all the one-second clips up and create the finished product. I then set it to the sounds of “Home” by Phillip Phillips and “Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield (throwback!) using iMovie and voila!

And yes, there really are 365 videos. I didn’t miss a single day!

A lot of people responded to the video saying they loved the idea, but doubted they could remember to take a video every day. I have a few tips for anyone interested in doing something similar.

I highly recommend the 1SE app. It has a preset space for each day and shows you any videos you took in those 24 hours to use. It also puts the dates on each picture, which adds a little extra to the video.

Turn on live pictures. You may not remember to take a video every day, but you usually (or at least I usually) take at least one picture every day. These pictures can be used as videos for your one second! This was a life saver for the few times I almost forgot to take a video!

It doesn’t have to be exciting. When I was done, I felt like half of my videos were just me watching TV or hanging out at home, but then I realized that’s ok because that’s my life! Most of those days I forgot to take a video until right before I went to sleep, which is why the video is my dark room watching TV.

Don’t wait to take your video. Take one any time it crosses your mind throughout the day. It doesn’t matter what it’s of or if you’re planning on taking one later. You can have a few to choose from!

Still photos are just as memorable as video clips. If you forget to take a video and don’t have live photos turned on, you can insert a still photo with the 1SE app and it captures the moment all the same.

If you miss a day, guess who’s going to notice? NO ONE! Except maybe your annoying sibling who will watch it the whole way through looking at dates just to catch it if you slip up. But in general, I promise no one will care if you miss a day or twelve! It’s more important to have some memories than none.

If it stills seems like too huge of a task, try just doing it for a month. If it works for you, keep going! If it’s not your thing, then you have a fun video to reflect on your month.

I used some other apps to make this process easier.

There’s this Video Rotate & Flip app that has been removed from the App Store (here’s a similar app) for when my phone took a video in the wrong orientation.

And this Video Crop app that has also been removed from the App Store (here’s a similar app) for when I wanted to use a vertical video without having black bars on the side.

Here’s to 365 more videos in 2018!