Guide/Book for Digital movie Editing

bamafamily wrote on 1/18/2005, 5:59 AM
Hey All,

I currently own MS4, and have a stack of tapes that I need to go through. The problem is that this is my first time creating a movie and I dont really know where to start.. I can figure out the mechanics to edit the movie..thats not the problem... The main stumbling block I am having is a starting point on what makes a good movie?? What gets cut out?? what stays in??

example..I have 4 hours of video from Christmas 2003. Most of it is just people sitting/walking around with the occasional surprise when a present is opened..Pretty boring for even the family to watch a second time. I am looking for a guide/book/something to give me a starting point for what I need to keep in the movie.

Is there a book/guide/list that somenone can point me to that has info like this??

thx
Mark

Comments

IanG wrote on 1/18/2005, 6:32 AM
There's no simple answer, though I'd assume that the vast majority of your footage isn't going to make it. I use Scenalyzer Pro to do my video capture - this has a feature that scans a tape while it's fast forwarding and then gives you thumnnails of the different scenes you've taken. You can then select the more interesting clips to be captured properly.

If you watch a professional documentary you'll notice that once they've done the establishing shots, you'll rarely see more than about 2 seconds of continuous video before they cut to something else - it doesn't take long to give an impression of what's happened. You could try creating an audio background of Christmas music, crackers, clinking of glasses and cutlery, muted chatter etc and then putting those short clips, minus their audio, on top of it. If there's a bit of original audio that you want to keep you can play with volume envelopes to bring that out.

Ian G.
Steve Grisetti wrote on 1/18/2005, 2:11 PM
Excellent answer, Ian!

The key to editing great home videos is to use the same principles professionals use when making motion pictures: Always tell a story that has a beginning, middle and end. Look for clips that reveal character. And, as Ian said, master the montage -- using a variety of clips of things happening around the action so that the viewer understands the entire context.

That said, one of the best books I've seen is called "$30 Film School." And, although its main focus is on narrative film, those same techniques can make all the difference between your videos looking like home movies and actually being something people want to watch.
gogiants wrote on 1/18/2005, 2:11 PM
A book I'd recommend is called the "Little Digital Video Book" by a guy named Michael Rubin. Lots of practical tips on organizing large amounts of footage, etc.

Best part to me, though, is his approach to making "home movies." He emphasizes creating short, watchable segments instead of trying to create a "hollywood movie" like so many books seem to do. Also, his tips on what to shoot and how to shoot it were really eye opening to me.

Trick in your case is that you do have a LOT of footage. But I think if you approach it in terms of what interesting little stories happened then you'll wind up with a much more watchable product. I just recently sifted through about an hour and a half of christmas footage and wound up with an 11 minute video composed of four short segments. Nobody felt cheated that I didn't show them EVERY present being opened!
IanG wrote on 1/18/2005, 2:47 PM
> I just recently sifted through about an hour and a half of christmas footage and wound up with an 11 minute video composed of four short segments.

10-15 minutes is what I generaly aim for - it seems to be just long enough to get everything in, but not long enough for people to lose interest, even if it's not very good! I find it's also short enough that you can view it several times, looking for mistakes and ways to improve it. Setting an upper limit also stops you getting lazy and just dumping footage in without thinking about it.

Ian G.
cold_surfer wrote on 1/18/2005, 9:06 PM
I used windows move maker -- but make sure you have enough drive space free - like a few hundred GIGS. It chews drive space FAST.

Need lots of RAM also. min 1gig to keep the machine from hanging.

Rip some suitable music into MP3 format and add it or clips of several songs. in XP you used to be able to buy the ASPI add-in to rip in windows media player for $10. I dunno if it is still avail. download any free mp3 ripper from download.com if not. You might have to find and install FORCE ASPI to do this. Windows sued the author and "forced" him to take down the free-bee site, however you can find copies of force aspi on google.com here and there. It lets you directly read a CD and rip audio. As far as I can tell, the $10 to windows for media player is just another version of that ASPI layer/driver. Selecting the right music made the largest improvement on the impact of the vid.

I started with the MUSIC and then cut the video to match the song. Sometimes I would get longerclips (30 sec is VERY long, 3 seconds seemed too short. 6-15 sec was about right.).

use transitions - drag and drop them..

the program is so intuitive -- no manual needed -- just a firewire or 2.0 USB connection. I used my SONY mini-DV camcorder to make about 6 videos of a recent pro surfing contest at 2-3 minutes each including titles and was very happy with the result. Pick the AVI-DV mode for the best quality. 312K bandwidth for a smaller file with fair resolution in a small window.

Good luck and have fun.

TD
cold_surfer wrote on 1/18/2005, 9:15 PM
check out my best vid - so far-- using windows movie maker:

www.solutionhost.com/brevard/old_school.wmv

-TD