How to Make a Home Movie With Your Camcorder

Video Transcript

"All right folks, in this clip I'm going to teach you how to make your very own home movie. Now if you've ever surfed Youtube, you've probably seen that just about anybody these days can make their own little version of what they would consider to be a home movie and post it for the whole world to see and it's literally one of the worst things you've ever watched in your entire life. It's shaky, it makes no sense, you have no idea what's going on, this is amateur hour, that's now what you want to be. You want to like be a cream of - you want to be the cream of the crop, you want to be a step above all that. So, how do you do that? First of all if you're going to shoot just home video footage of special events like birthdays, holidays, family vacations, whatever, you're going to want to do it in such a way where first of all, you're not letting the shots drag on for too long, you want to move from beat to beat to beat, capture the action, capture someone's funny reaction or someone you know, being cute, but then you know, when you finally put it together, using your home little video editing system which just about everyone has these days, don't drag the shot on for more than you know fifteen, twenty seconds, it's not - people are going to actually watch this at some point, that's not what they want to see. Learn how to pace your home movies, learn how to cut and edit and paste them together in such a way that's it's visually pleasing for everyone to watch, not just you but hey, even strangers who are going to have to sit down and be forced to watch these home movies just because they're over having dinner at your house or something. Do it for them. Second of all, for the purpose of your own home viewing pleasure and entertainment, add a little bit of music to it. Just to give the thing a little bit of life and personality. Now if you're going to use this for anything beyond your own home viewing pleasure, you're going to have to get you know copyrighted position if you're ever going to post it online, say you're anything like that, supposedly, but just for your own fun viewing pleasure if this is just a home movie, throw your favorite song on there, maybe your favorite couple songs on there, if it's about your family's road trip across the coast all the way up to see your grandparents, throw some fun road trip music on there, get some fun shots of the road. That would be a way to kind of make the video a little bit more interesting. And then lastly and this is something a lot of people don't really think about. Instead of always just shooting the action, don't forget to get some good b-roll, that would be one way of putting it, or another way of putting it would be get some good coverage. If you're going to be shooting Christmas morning with your kids, don't just go from present to present to present, kids opening one after another after another, maybe get some shots of the tree and the decorations thrown there to add a little bit of a visual break between them. Go outside and shoot the house with the snow that's just falling and covering the yard. When you're experiencing these events, you're not just moving from action to action to action, you're taking in everything. The room, the people in it, the decorations, the food, the - just the general ambiance. Find a way to cut not just what was happening at any given moment into your home movie, but give it a little bit more life and a little bit more just room to breathe by adding what we call either b-roll or coverage into your shots. And these are just a few tips that I have on making your very own home movies, quality home movies."