Filmmaker Greg Wasz: Don't Miss Holiday Moments Worth Recording

Greg Wasz, a Cincinnati-based sales professional and founder of Greg Wasz Productions, is urging families to rethink how they capture holiday memories. With years of experience turning family travel and holiday moments into finished videos, Wasz observes that the period between late November and the start of a new year offers more opportunities for filming than almost any other time. “Holidays bring people together in one place, often for the only time all year,” he says. “That alone makes it worth having a camera out.” Yet he notes that families often reserve their cameras for big trips like a week in Italy or a stay at Disney, while overlooking the quieter moments at home—a living room on Christmas morning, a grandparent telling a story, kids arguing over a board game—that ultimately hold the most meaning.

Wasz identifies the most common mistake as treating video as something reserved for vacations. “People save the camera for the big trip and miss everything that happens in between,” he explains. “Those in-between moments are usually the ones that matter most a few years later.” He also highlights that holiday gatherings often include relatives—grandparents, cousins, distant family—who may only be in the same room once a year, making the season a natural opportunity to record them. His approach mirrors his professional work: shoot more than needed, then edit down later. “Raw footage from a holiday is rarely interesting on its own,” he says. “It’s the editing that turns it into a story people want to watch again.”

For his own family, Wasz has built a habit of filming both trips to places like the Maldives, California, and St. Barts and smaller moments at home, then combining them into cohesive videos. He suggests that the turn of the calendar is an ideal time for families to shift their mindset—not by buying new equipment or apps, but by changing what they film. “Start with what’s already happening instead of waiting for a big event,” he advises. “A holiday dinner or a quiet afternoon at home is enough.” He adds that a few minutes of real, unplanned moments often outlast footage from a staged event. As the year closes, Wasz believes the families who end up with videos worth watching are those who start filming before they feel ready, not after they have a reason. Greg Wasz is a sales professional based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the founder of Greg Wasz Productions, a personal video content venture. He lives with his wife, Jenna, and their three children.