Home video editing - tips and tricks; song recommendations; how-to; etc.

Cafe Society
1

Hi -

I’ve got a bunch of old home movies on VHS, and between now and Christmas I’d like to a) digitize them and b) put together a montage/collection as a surprise for my family. A couple questions for anyone who might have done this before…:

  1. I imagine the video being about an hour long. At some points I’ll probably want music playing behind the clips. Any song recommendations? Songs about family, children, parents, siblings, growing up? (Nothing too maudlin, though…) Orchestral pieces that you’ve found particularly effective?

  2. It might be nice to includes quotes or even a poem on those same themes. Suggestions there?

  3. These tapes cover the six members of my family plus assorted friends and relatives over the past 20-30 years. As I put this together, are there any recommendations as to effective organizing techniques? Should it be strictly chronological? By person? Something else? I’ve got the usual assortment of shots - school plays, shaky hand-held recordings of old birthday parties, sporting events… What kind of stuff is most effective to include?

  4. Finally (and maybe most alarmingly, given the time constraints!) I am a COMPLETE novice at digitizing and editing old video. Assuming I’m not foolish to think I can pull this off in three weeks, what’s the best approach - should I get a DVD/VHS combo (like this) and convert them that way? Something that plugs directly into my laptop? What’s the best, most user-friendly video editor to use?

Help!!! And thank you in advance!
**Mods: no idea what forum is most appropriate for this; please move as you see fit. Thanks -

2

My suggestion is that you should probably break it up by person. If this is your first attempt, and I mean no offense, it’s going to be very difficult to create a watchable hour-long video if you just go straight through it. Dividing it chronologically, you may well have some rather bored people waiting for you to get to the present.
Going by person, you’ve got at least one person who will want to watch their segment, which probably will be short enough to hold their interest. Then they don’t have to be as heavily invested in the other parts if they don’t want to sit and watch it. Depending on audience it can be a little more social (assuming you’re playing this for them); as the focus shifts from person to person the group can talk to/about that person.

If you can, try to come up with some sort of narrative to the segments, possibly after viewing what you have. This will make it much easier for you to decide what to leave in and what to cut. It’s really a lot of work to trim it all down into something sensible, but I applaud you for doing this for them.

I can’t say what music will be good to use for the tone you want. I imagine you’ll want something subdued but with motion to it. One instrumental I like for this is Jefferson Airplane’s Embryonic Journey.

3

If you go with that VHS/DVD combo, you’ll also want something like one of these for video capture. Use S-Video for best quality. Some of those come with editing software, though I really can’t speak to their quality, as I’m on a Mac. If you can afford it, I’d get just the basic capture device and software that’s more full-featured (in the $50-$100 range). I can’t say what’s going to be easiest for you to pick up or for what your want to produce. Generally, the ‘simple’ tools will limit and possibly frustrate your efforts; the more complex tools will be tougher to learn but end up easier to use.

Another instrumental similar to Embryonic Journey - Anji, by Simon & Garfunkel

The Clock Ticks On - Blackmore’s Night
A Renaissance dance/march with nice lyrics about the passage of time.

We’re Only Love - Counting Crows
The lyrics are slightly vague, but it’s about family. This is an early Counting Crows track, and may be hard to find.

To Go Home - M Ward (cover of Daniel Johnston song)
This version leaves out some of the creepier verses, and it’s a sweet song. Though still about dying, and/or loving someone who has died.

Little Shadow (Acoustic Version) - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
The Acoustic version has strings that give it much more motion and brightness. Could be a song to a child, though some lyrics have a slightly dark tinge (“To the night will you follow me?”).

Time - Shawn McDonald
If you like Ecclesiastes 3 but don’t want to use “Turn, Turn, Turn”. This one is more upbeat and faster. This song’s a little inane in my opinion, but it can work as background music since you’re not paying close attention.

These Are The Days of Our Lives - Queen
Maybe clichéd, but I don’t hear it used all that often nowadays.

We Close Our Eyes - Oingo Boingo
Some of it is about two people in love, though there’s a bunch about life passing by. The music gives the dark lyrics the happy tone that’s more of what the song is about.

Jayne’s Blue Wish - Tom Waits
“Life is a path lit only by the light of those I’ve loved”. There’s also a great instrumental version by Pascal Fricke.

4

What a cool idea, and what treasure trove of material you must have!

I would go through the footage & make extensive notes. Divide the notes onto post-its. Then start grouping the post-its on a big empty wall to see in what way you could make an engaging narrative. Look at it like a puzzle, each time trying to link certain events, adding bits in between where you suddenly see how they relate.

I (personally) think it will be more engaging to watch if it in neither chronologically nor segmented per person. Here are some ideas:

  • Look for recurring events and try to rhythmically interject them (eg things that fall, people asleep, babies laughing, silly faces, children crying etc. Cliches maybe, but they’re cliches for a reason)

  • Look for ways that events are connected that are not chronological/person-related (pointing out how one person looks so much like their dad, how events repeated themselves)

  • Maybe you have some similar situations in entirely different seasons, or years. You can make it visually interesting by intercutting between the two, emphasizing the difference. (eg birthdays where everyone had 80’s hair vs recent birthday, summer visit to grandparents vs snowy visit)

  • You may be able to find content on youtube that relates to news events of the time. Using that footage in a montage could help place the events in a time frame. (eg Obama was elected -> garden party or 1998 heavy snowfall -> day off work with lots of snowball fights)

  • Similarly you could consider taking still photographs of things like birth announcements, invitations and the likes. You can make them more interesting to look at by adding a (slight!) zoom and/or pan into the still.

Sorry if I’m just telling you loads of stuff you already know!

Good luck & let us know about the results :slight_smile:

5

I’d suggest shooting for a length closer to 10 minutes for your first video.

I’m a professional video editor, and I find I spend about an hour per minute of footage. Granted, I’m working towards perhaps a more polished piece than you have in mind, but that will give you an idea of what kind of timeframe you’re looking at. If you don’t really know the software you’ll be working with, that will just add to the time.

10 minutes is long enough to cut together a solid montage of your family and tell a compelling story. You’ll be able to choose the very best footage and keep it flowing nicely. An hour will be a daunting proposition once you start approaching your deadline. Plus, I think a shorter length will help you focus your efforts, creating a more compelling piece for your audience.

If you have any questions, shoot 'em my way.

6

You don’t have enough time time to make a watchable video. Editing down the raw footage takes a lot of time. It’s not because it’s technically difficult. It’s because you have to watch so much video to determine what clips to use. Then you have to spend a lot of time editing them together and watching the resulting video, tweaking it, rewatching it, tweaking it, etc.

As a novice, you’re going to spend hours putting something together and then realize it’s long and boring and have to redo it. You don’t have the eye for how to make an interesting video yet. You’ll figure it out, but it takes time. And it takes time to do the layout, decide which music you want, etc.

What I would suggest for Christmas is make a small video of maybe 20 minutes that you can have looping on the TV. Have the scenes be short. And I mean short! Don’t show kids jumping on the trampoline for 2 minutes. A few seconds and then move on to something else. If it doesn’t have people in it, cut it. Don’t include video of animals at the zoo, a parade, the Grand Canyon, etc. Cut, cut, cut. Don’t try to include everything on the tapes. Set your goals to make something short and you can probably make something good.

Later on, work on longer videos. Personally I would not spend a lot of time on a longer video. You’ll spend 100 hours making a 1 hour video and people will only watch it once or twice. Instead, do a simple VHS -> DVD conversion where you cut out a lot of the boring stuff, maybe add a soundtrack, and that’s about it. Don’t worry too much about layout and editing. Give everyone the DVDs and they can watch it or re-edit them however they like.

7

Thank you ALL - this is extremely interesting advice, both helpful and a little daunting. I might have to downgrade my plans and make something 15-20 minutes long, instead of a full hour. And hey, if people love it (and I enjoy the process of making it) maybe I’ll work on something longer for Christmas next year.

I hadn’t thought of this in terms of narrative, but of course you’re all correct. This is bringing back bits of film theory I studied years ago.

8

How about this for a quick get-started project: make the trailer for that 20 minute movie. Do 2-4 minutes of quick-cut footage + some music + humorous titles that promise a full movie coming soon to a theater near you!!! That’d be a good practive project. You’d need to digitize a sampling of your tapes and review a bunch of footage, but you could just punch down some memorable stuff as you see it until you get enough very very short clips to assemble something fun. You could go watch a bunch of actual movie trailers to get ideas & steal music from. Pick a theme – you could make the “rom-com” trailer, the “whacky comedy trailer”, perhaps a psycho-thriller trailer with ominous portents. Pick a plot, find some clips that advance that theme, and do bullshit voiceovers: “this fall. A movie. That will warm. Your heart”+uplifting theme, yada yada. There’s a bunch of mocku-trailer spoofs online, go find one and get ideas.

9

I’m only midway through digitizing these old tapes and haven’t even begun to think about editing them. But having spent some hours watching all this stuff, I thought I’d share some tips and reflections for people who are into videotaping now:

[ul]
[li]School plays and basketball games are great, but a little goes a very long way. If you’re disinclined to pick up your video camera very often, skip the performance stuff and spend more time recording the every day stuff. Twenty years down the road you don’t want a third of your home video collection to consist of second grade dance recitals. Trust me. [/li][li]For god’s sake, don’t tape over your home movies. It’s kinda heartbreaking to have a video labeled “Home Movies 1987” and pop it in the VCR only to see they’ve been taped over with an old episode of Star Trek.[/li][li]LABEL YOUR MOVIES. You might think you could never forget where you were and how old the kids are in this moment, but believe me - you’ll forget.[/li][li]Better yet, have someone on tape say what day and year it is, and where you are.[/li][li]Home movies are not just about kids!! Yeah, yeah, I know you’re camera shy, but mom, dad, uncles, aunts, grandma, granddad: get in there. Twenty years later it’s just as interesting to see how the adults look and to hear what they say. Please.[/li][li]Pick up the camera at least once a year. Yes, I know it can be a bother, but it’s interesting to see the aging process, and in retrospect it’s really sad when there’s a five year gap between recordings.[/li][li]Birthday parties and Christmas mornings are fun, but in some ways the more prosaic, everyday stuff is even more interesting. Every now and then, tape the family having dinner, or bring the camera to the pool, or along for a car ride.[/li][li]Interview people on camera. It’s interesting to hear what they say.[/li][li]If you have old tapes of events that include shots of family friends, share it with them. Maybe they’ll share their videos with you. Having discovered that I don’t have quite as much good video as I’d hoped, I’d love it if some old family friends sent me things.[/li][li]VHS really does disintegrate. If you’ve got a bunch you haven’t converted yet, get on it before it’s too late.[/li][li]This stuff really is worthwhile. Memory plays tricks on you, and it’s incredibly moving to pop in a tape and be transported to your life ten, twenty, or thirty years ago. [/li][/ul]

10

And P.S., if you’ll forgive the shill: the Honestech VHS to DVD 5.0 Deluxe is awesome. You plug the red, white, and yellow cables from your old VCR into a little box, connect that box via USB to your computer, and voila - you can start digitally recording your old tapes. The quality is (as best I can tell) about as good as what you’d see on TV if you were to play the tapes from your VCR, and for less than fifty bucks, it’s a bargain.

11

You might get better quality using the S-Video input instead of composite. Worth a shot if you have a cable and the player outputs that (which it should), otherwise it’s probably not enough of a difference to matter. Just use the S-Video cable instead of the yellow video one (leave it unplugged). Plug the red and white (audio) ones to the S-Video audio output.

12

A few years back I created a family video showing the kids on Christmas day over many years. I tried a lot of different music backgrounds. I finally settled on the theme from Forrest Gump. It’s catchy, not too strong to drown out the regular video audio, and there’s a kind of nostalgic feel to it. For me, it also evokes feelings of wonder, happiness, and some sadness. All part of growing up. As to how to assemble the numerous videos that you have, I’d suggest more shorter videos instead of fewer longer videos. What I usually do is make my first cut video and it’s typically much longer than would hold someone’s attention for very long. Then I would edit out all the non-essential parts that can be removed without changing the intent of each video segment. The I edit some more and then edit some more. At the end I’ll have a short, crisp video to show. I’d keep the original long version for myself or if anyone would be interested in seeing the bloated video.

13

This sounds much like the writing process - thanks. :slight_smile: The theme from Forrest Gump - excellent idea!!