Editing tips...Part II

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.

Why Create a Video Montage of Baby's First Year?

Even though my son turned one two months ago, it is still settling in that I have a one year old! I am so glad that I took the time to create a one year montage for his first birthday party. Although a great deal of my footage is shot from an iPhone or other cellular device, it was so crazy to watch his progression during the first year edited together into a thirty minute video with fun music and titles.  I stressed myself out to have the cut ready for his birthday party to play on loop on a television, but the truth is that it really was a video for my family and eventually for my son to watch himself grow during the biggest developmental year of his life.

When Xander was first born, each day seemed to take forever. I was just trying to fill our days with something until nighttime when I could actually get a little bit of sleep. I wanted to engage him and expose him to developmentally appropriate things, but every day was somewhat of a challenge to do so.  I was in love with my little guy, don't get me wrong, but adjusting to life with a newborn for the first time was very daunting.  Even though filming his twitches during sleep or playing on his activity mat did not seem like such a big deal at the time because I was watching him do these things every day, at the end of the first year you do start to forget those little details and I am so glad I captured them on video. With the video footage edited into a montage, I'm able to not only see them over and over again in the context of his development during the year, but I don't have to scroll through copious videos on my phone to find them among everything else I have shot.  In addition, editing only the best part of each video makes the whole thirty minutes very interesting and engaging to watch.

Some of the friends and family who attended his first birthday had only experienced bits and pieces of his first year, some had never even met him.  Allowing all of them to get a unique inside look at the ridiculous amount of changes he has already been through in such a short period of time made his birthday party even more about celebrating that whole first year not only for Xander, but for us as parents as well.  Overall, a video montage covering such an important year was key for me and I hope to be able to help other parents create lasting memories with their own home movies as well.