Make a Home Video

A bad home video is painful to watch, full of unclear shots and long stretches of poorly-edited downtime. Fortunately, making a good (or even great) home video isn't hard, when you know how. Read these steps to learn for yourself.

Steps

Planning

  1. Get equipment. To make a home movie, you'll need some sort of video recording device. Digital camcorders offer the best video quality and options, but cell phones are more convenient and, if you already own a video phone, cheaper. You should also find a tripod for smooth still shots, unless you want the video to be shaky throughout (which is fine in some kinds of videos). There are tripods made for both smartphones and regular digital camcorders. A small digital microphone may be useful for interviews. If you want or need any lighting elements, now is the time to collect those, as well.
    • Phone tripods tend to be smaller and shorter than camcorder tripods. Find a raised flat surface (like a table) to make them “taller” if needed.
    • Your camcorder may also come with protective gear, including a cap over the lens to keep it from getting scratched. Be sure to remove the lens cap before filming!
  2. Come up with an idea. Are you recording a special event, an ordinary day, or something else? Do you want to interview people, have them act naturally, or use them as actors in a play? Think about these and similar questions, and come up with a rough plan to follow. Even something mundane like filming a child playing or a wedding reception can often benefit from a bit of advance planning.
    • If you're filming a play or scripted scene, you'll need a few more supplies, including costumes, props, and copies of your script. If you're interested in adding cool props without spending a lot of money, check out the YouTube show “Backyard FX” for plenty of interesting and easy-to-follow tutorials.
      • You'll need a powerful video editor such as Adobe After Effects to create special effects like muzzle flashes and laser beams. The program is pretty expensive, so be forewarned. Physical props, on the other hand, can usually be made cheaply.
    • If you're filming a family function like a reunion or wedding, make a general plan instead of just filming whatever is in front of you all day. Take key people (like the bride and groom) aside for interviews, or get some shots of the venue and then interview someone about its history. Your finished video can combine all these elements to make a very watchable reel that never gets boring.
    • If you're just filming things as they happen (as with pets or children), plan to keep filming for a while, and then condense it down to the most interesting parts later. You run a higher chance of capturing something funny or charming this way.
  3. Set up ahead of time. Check the battery level of your recording device before you begin, and have a charger nearby just in case. Turn it on and off, and adjust all the settings to ensure they're working. Clear away any extra junk (like laundry on the floor) that doesn't need to be in your shots, and be sure the tripod is assembled and working properly. Shoot a little bit of test video and play it back to make sure the color and sound are okay. Check your microphone as well, if you're using one. Finally, prepare lighting: light candles, angle desk lights, or open windows until you get the quality of light you want.

Writing the Script

  1. Write a script. Make sure that its not too on the edge of your seat or one small fall in climax (the action of it). This will make your audience get bored. Make sure all of the characters in it are distinct. Ease into your topic (For example, if the people are on a date and they get in an argument just sitting down and shouting "I hate you!" it won't work out) and make sure it flows.
  2. Draft actors and helpers. Make sure that the actors have talent. Don't draft them because they're cool or are your friend. If you want them to help, try an off camera job. Make sure to have an understudy in case someone gets sick.
  3. Revise your script and cut out the boring scenes. Make sure by at least the 5th page that the plot is established.
  4. Dry film (don't use a camera) the scenes. See if some still don't work or it takes too long to film. It's alright to have the cast read off a script.
  5. Revise the script again, and then work on the memorization. Have it memorized with all your actors including the understudies.

Filming

  1. Start with area shots. Get some shots of the place you'll be filming; these can come in very handy, depending on the type of video you're making, and they can serve as your test footage besides. Area shots can be interspersed to give videos a better sense of place. They can also serve as useful segues between scenes, or give you a chance to add a voice-over or credits sequence.
    • Shoot your area shots using the tripod, so that they're steady.
  2. Use three shots to make a professional-looking video. By varying wide, medium, and close-up shots, you can compose a finished video that's more attention-grabbing than the average continuous-shot home video.
    • Wide-angle, panoramic shots can be done from a tripod to establish place for scene changes in your story, or to give the viewer a sense of the size of an event such as a party or wedding. A wide-angle shot with an acute angle to a road is also perfect for car chases, if you're making that kind of video.
    • Medium shots are used to show action. Shoot from a moderate distance (or using a moderate zoom) to capture things like playing children, group dances, or people eating at a family reunion. The medium shot is also good for showing sword fights, stunt scenes, and sports plays.
    • Close-up shots are best used to show emotions and reactions. They're also useful for interviews or dialog between characters. Try to frame people to one side of your close shots rather than right in the center.
  3. Record scenes out of order. It's fine to film things according to what makes sense at the moment, and then edit your video so that everything flows on the finished product. If you're filming a family event and you want to interview people, for example, you can do short interviews before and after the event, and then cut them into footage of the event itself to create a running narrative. If you've got people in costumes with props, film all your scenes with those items first, and then switch to other pieces and film those scenes afterward. It's easy to reorder parts of your video later, thanks to modern video editing software.
  4. Transfer video to your computer. Once you've got all the footage you're going to get, put it all on your computer so that you can cut out the extra parts, reorder it, and put finishing touches on it. High-quality video takes up a lot of space, so consider using an external hard drive for longer videos.
    • To get video from your camcorder, either hook the camcorder up to your computer with a cable made especially for that purpose (most new camcorders will come with one already), or record it to optical media (if your camcorder has a built-in DVR) and then transfer the video from your discs to the computer.
    • To get video from your smartphone, either e-mail it to yourself and then download it from your computer, or hook up the phone to the computer with a cable and transfer the files directly, as you would with a digital camcorder. Note that the e-mail method is prohibitively slow for longer videos.

Editing

  1. Cut out excess footage. To start with, open your raw video file in either Windows Media Maker (Windows users) or iMovie (Mac users). There are other free programs available as well, but these are the two that most computer users are likely to already have installed, and they're both roughly equal in terms of power and usefulness. Go through the timeline of your video and highlight, then delete any segments you know you won't need.
    • It's best to be rough and approximate at this stage. Only cut out things you're sure you won't use, and don't cut them off too closely to things you probably will use. You can clean up the odds and ends of your clips later.
  2. Reorder your video. Still using rough cuts, separate each “part” of the video into its own chunk, and move them around on the timeline. Use the video preview function on your program to get a sense of how scenes will flow from one to the next.
    • Spend as much time as you want at this stage. Try everything that crosses your mind, until each of your segments flows smoothly from one to the next (rough video cuts notwithstanding). You may find that some footage isn't as useful as you thought it'd be; it's fine to delete such footage.
    • Follow a sensible narrative first, and worry about varying shots second. Sometimes you might find that you end up with a lot of one type of shot (wide, medium, or close) in a row. That's fine as long as the video's narrative makes sense that way.
  3. Finish the cuts. Zoom into your timeline so that you can edit at very small time intervals, and clip out excess footage on the ends of your segments. Check your work with the preview tool to be sure you've gotten all the excess footage.
    • You can add simple video transitions between scenes by overlaying them on the timeline, if you want. These include things like horizontal and vertical screen wipes, fade-outs, and text titling. Play around with your program's transition effects library to find some you like, or skip them for a more organic-looking video.
  4. Add effects, if necessary. If you've got some skill, a copy of After Effects (or a similar program), and footage that needs Foley sounds or virtual explosions and gunfire, now is the time to add those elements. You'll have to export the video file and open it in your effects program. Once you're finished adding effects, save the video and open it back up in your basic movie editor again.
    • This guide doesn't cover any specifics of how to create effects in After Effects or similar programs, but there are a couple of guides elsewhere on wikiHow, including one on Make-a-Lightsaber-Prop-and-Rotoscope-It-on-Adobe-After-Effects.
    • Once you've exported your video, it'll open in your movie editor as one continuous file again. If you want to break it back into sections after this point, you'll have to do so manually.
  5. Add the finishing touches. If you'd like to add music, you can do so by importing music files and dragging them into your timeline's audio track. You can choose to mute the original video track (useful for scene shots), or leave it on and use the music to add emotion to an interview or speech. Finally, add a title card to the beginning of your movie - or title it on top of the opening footage for a more active effect – and add credits, if necessary, to the end.
    • Once you're done with your video, watch it with the preview tool one more time, and then export it to create a finished video. If you save it rather than exporting it, it'll remain a video project file rather than an actual video.
  6. Share your video. Now that you've got a finished video, share it with people. If you're recording a video to distribute to friends or family, use a DVR drive to burn copies of it to DVD discs and mail them to your recipients. To share it with the world at large, you can upload your video to YouTube, Vimeo, or a similar site.
    • If you're uploading a video, avoid using copyrighted music. Sometimes, record companies get upset about unlicensed use of copyrighted songs and will complain to get your video taken down. You probably won't get into any actual trouble, but it's still frustrating.
    • You can make your YouTube videos semi-private by only allowing people who have the URL (web address) to access the video, but there's always a chance someone unintended will stumble across it by accident, so keep your content above board.

Warnings

  • Don't use footage of people without their express permission. It's not illegal to film people without their knowledge (as long as they're on public property), but it is illegal to publish such footage.

Things You'll Need

  • Camcorder or smartphone
  • Tripod
  • External microphone, if desired
  • Light kit, if desired
  • A computer with editing software
  • Time

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