any advice on home movies?

dogwalker wrote on 5/11/2009, 10:45 AM
[this is also posted in Vegas Pro and DVDA forums, sorry, but I want to target as many creative people as possible, and you may not read all three forums]

I searched for "home movies" but perhaps I should have widened my criteria. If this has already been addressed multiple times, I apologize.

Basically, I have a lot of old family movies from the past twenty years, and I want to create dvds from them. I've done a few, and people have enjoyed them. I think my push to make them even more interesting is mainly for me.

Up to now, I've done a few things like slow motion for a few frames when the kids were jumping on the trampoline, editing a lot of redundant footage to make the movies shorter, doing a few PiPs where appropriate.

Well, someone in this forum recommended looking at Digital Juice products, so I've bought some stuff there recently (Halloween and Fire swipe sets, and the Wedding Ring editor toolkit). Since I have footage of various halloween parties, I hope to make use of it, and the Fire ones are just for fun.

I'd like to use the Wedding toolkit to take my wedding video and make it look nice, and perhaps my in-laws wedding video as well.

Here's the thing. I'm learning the technical aspects of masking, mattes, PiP, etc, but I'd like to find some training, examples, etc on the creative side. Things like how/when to use Lower Thirds, moving backgrounds, etc. And when do I use these in the video versus using them in DVDA while building the DVD? I'm going to post this in the DVDA forum, too, just for that reason.

Thanks in advance!

Comments

Action wrote on 5/11/2009, 3:29 PM
Hi DW, fancy running into you :) How about finding some of the folk in the movies and doing a 7 UP type of program. You know, show them their early footage then record their impressions and memories from back then? Cut it all together.

In future years you could do this again. If you're the same DW ask this at P3U too :)

Cheers.
dogwalker wrote on 5/11/2009, 7:16 PM
P3U? I think there may be another dogwalker out there somewhere, because none of what you just said is familiar, but thanks anyway! :-)

Andy C wrote on 5/12/2009, 2:54 AM
LOL! Perhaps *not* such a small world after all...

Anyway, regarding home movies, I just wanted to add a note of caution. I have spent many hours trimming down footage and playing it to an eager family. The end result can make the once-ramshakle footage seem very clinical and dry. In my experience, what's great to see is the unedited version, complete with bloopers and outtakes. This works especially well after several years have passed since it was shot. There's something about the naturalness of the raw scenes that make compulsive viewing for those involved in the original filming.

But... that's not to say that there's not room for fully edited highlights. There will always be a relative who just wants the best bits, and without that damn camera shake! Where would we be without digital and optical stabilisers nowadays?
dogwalker wrote on 5/12/2009, 6:15 AM
Thanks for the advice, Andy!
Altair 4 wrote on 5/12/2009, 7:57 AM
I think everyone looks for different things in old home movies. My wife, for isntance, is fascinated by seeing the people and things in the background - "oh, look, there's grandpa and his old Pontiac" kind of thing. Sometimes it's seeing old homes that she previously lived in. When we restoreed a house we bought from a relative that was orginally built in the 1920's, it was seeing how the place looked before it was "remuddled" in the 1960's.

I, too, would recommend not making it too sterile. I think that's part of the fun of seeing the old movies.
dogwalker wrote on 5/12/2009, 10:44 AM
good points - I think the challenge is to show significant scenes and still not lose the audience. A few times I've used PiP to show different sections of the movie together, but still cut down on the length of the movie.
Action wrote on 5/13/2009, 5:51 PM
LOL 2 dog walkers how about that. The duration of a program has a lot to do with it. If you get a family reputation for *very long* shows folk shy away no matter how you edit it.

Cheers.