As promised, here are some more technical tips for editing. First off, if you're gotten as far as pulling all your clips and putting them into a cohesive story, congratulations! It's a big deal to even make it this far. If you want to make your videos look even more professional, read on...
So your clips are either in chronological order or grouped together by types of milestones, now it's time to tweak the video it and make it look even better. In my last post about editing, I recommended not using clips more than 20 seconds long, so you may have some clips of the same event right next to each other and it feels kind of jumpy going from one shot to the next. Putting in a transition, like a cross dissolve, may help. But if you're cutting from one perspective to just a bit of time later from the same perspective, then your clips will still look a bit jumpy, even with a cross dissolve. If you can cut away from the same perspective, even if the true passage of time is altered, it will look better to a viewer. For example, you can cut away from the front perspective to the side perspective, and then back to the front perspective again. In my filming tips I recommended shooting events from different distances and from different angles and the camera movement could be edited out.
Hopefully you have the option of cutting to shots from different perspectives. Now it's important to make the cut on an action. If you look at some of my sample videos, you'll gain a better understanding of what I mean. In my Video Baby Books Sampler at 1:22 you'll see I cut when his hand was hitting the table from the front perspective to the side perspective, so it almost looks like I shot this with two different cameras at the same time. It was two different shots, but when cut it together on the action, it looks seamless. Another example is in the First Haircut Video, at 1:23 I cut with the "cut" of her scissors from a wide shot to a tight shot. Because I edited from a wide shot to a tight shot, it's hard to tell that they were shot at a different time, continuity isn't an issue.
Another thing you want to take into account is the use of music and cutting on the beats of the music. Sometimes you'll have a great edit that cuts on the action, but once you put a soundtrack to the video, it just doesn't feel as nice. The music should enhance your story, not detract from it. When you're doing a montage with all different clips, it's easier to edit your clips to the music. Just make sure that you have the best part of the clip still in the edit after you've tweaked your cuts to the music. You may have to start the clips a bit earlier or a bit later.
In terms of putting clips together, you want to feel like your story is moving forwards. You don't want to have too many similar clips one after another. I have the benefit of being able to shoot in true slow motion HD on my Sony FS100. If you're using a high quality editing software, you should be able to manipulate the passage of time in your clips. However, when you make a clip slow motion, it will look a bit jumpy because the frames "between" the frames do not exist. More specifically, if you shoot something at 30fps (typical digital frame rate in North America) and then play it back at 15fps, then every other frame will be missing. If you're camera has the ability to shoot slow motion, it is actually filming twice as fast so that when you play back at normal speed, it looks slow motion.
I hope this information is helpful. Remember, you can always take a stab at it yourself and then bring in an expert if it becomes too overwhelming. I am available to help with editing remotely as well. Be sure to check out my other blog posts for other tips on creating your own video baby books or take a look at some video baby books I've created on my site.
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