5 Tips For Great Home Videos

8 mm movies may be dead, but the curse of Home Movies isn't... yet

Millions of people have camcorders or home video cameras.

They sit on the shelf until we go on a vacation.
Then we take them out, charge up the battery, and start rolling tape.
Whether it's a trip to the Grand Canyon or Rome, we blow through a few hours of video.

Then, when we get home, no one, (not even we) wants to look at the stuff. And if we do inflict this on our friends or ourselves, we all have the same feeling. Boring!

So here are 5 tips on how to make great home videos. 

1.  EDITING!

Up until very recently, editing your own home movies or home video was next to impossible.  For the very techinically adventurous, you could wire two VHS decks together and through elaborate use of the pause and record buttons you could either edit together a crude film or succeed in erasing a good part of your originals.  It wasn't fun, but it was a challenge.

Now, thanks to the arrival of simple and often free software packages like iMovie, anyone can edit their videos with the simplicty of word processing.  Even easier, as there are fewer keys to push! 

While we might be inclined to shoot 8 hours of real time video on that once in a lifetime trip to the Great Wall of China, let's all confess that we would be really happy with a great 2-3 minute video of that part of the trip - assuming it looked great.  So when we're out shooting, let's try and target a final goal of 1- 2 minutes edited final product per day.  So a 7 day trip might give us a 10 minute film on our trip.  14 days might make 20, or about the length of a half hour show on Discovery, minus the commercials.

To get there, lets all aim for a shooting ratio of 20:1. That is, 20 minutes of raw material for every minute of cut and finished product.  So if you're shooting 20-40 minutes of raw footage a day, you're right on target.

 

2. IT'S ABOUT PEOPLE!

Recently I was looking at some old kodachromes my dad shot on a family trip to Europe in 1967. 90% of the photos were of buildings and monuments. Who cares! The only interesting stuff were the shots of people - particularly people that we knew. Family members or friends.  Even when it's happening, no one really cares about the buildings, the paintings, the river.  And if you do, you can get much better stuff online.  Is anyone really interested in seeing your endless tilts of the Eiffel Tower? Not!  Focus on the people... not the stones.

 

3.  WHAT IS HAPPENING? TELL ME A STORY

The most interesting stuff you can shoot is what actually happened that day.  Tommy was late getting down for breakfast. We missed the bus.  To this day I can remember when my sister threw up in the Vatican.  It's that kind of small story, but very personal, that makes the most interesting story. Not that the Fumicelli Monument was erected in 1873.  Who cares!  When you go to make a video of your trip, it's YOUR TRIP, not a video replica of a travel brochure.  Stick to the small and perhaps even seemingly insigificant stuff, and you'll end up making much  more compelling stories that everyone will want to watch for years to come. And even packing the bags and rushing to the train station is a lot more interesting than standing stick still in front of a museum.

4.  GET YOURSELF INTO THE THING.

You're using video to tell a story - so tell it to me. Don't hesitate to look into the camera and tell us exactly what is going on - or exactly what you are thinking at this moment. Or force others in the family to do the same.  As Don Hewitt used to say, 'Tell Me A Story". So tell it to me!

5.  MUSIC!

You're not making a TV show for cable so there is no probem with music rights, and music is probably a big part of your life and your trip. So let's listen in on what you're listening to.  And what's playing on the car radio as you drive.  It will make a great sound track and more than that, it will be an historial archive when you look at this thing 20 years from now.  The Bee Gees! What were we thinking?