It’s the holiday season, and we all know what that means…yes, it’s also home movie season! Home movies have been a tradition in my family since I was a kid, and we have libraries of videos that chronicle holidays upon holidays.
I think it’s a fun thing to do during family get-togethers and different events that you and your family may be organizing for the holidays. I’ve always thought of home movies as a way to record and keep cherished memories while learning how to use the features on a new camera or improve your skills on an old one.
And now that I am actively involved in the video production field, I have all sorts of new ideas about how to improve your holiday home videos. I have picked up a few tips over the years, so I hope that my insights will be of help to you:
Care about your audience
This one may sound silly, but it’s important to care about your audience. Even though this may just be an amateur video, you’re still a film-maker that is presenting something to a group of people that will be watching and paying attention to the scenes you have captured. So, I have found that it is helpful to be mindful of them and shoot appropriately. By this, I mean try to capture things that you and your family may find meaningful or significant. This is completely subjective and based on your opinion as a film-maker because you get to determine what those things are.
Keep your shots concise
It is important to keep your shots concise and to the point by deciding what it is you want to shoot or deciding what the action is. Hitting record and letting a particular moment play out and then stopping makes for wonderful editing material. It isn’t necessary to sit and capture every little thing unless you are a person that likes to sit through hours of footage, which is ok too. However, if you have a number of concise, to the point shots that play one after another, editing may be more enjoyable.
Capture a variety of shots
You can feel free to shoot people talking and having fun, but also it is always nice to set up your scene by shooting your surroundings in order to capture the feeling of the moment. Whether it’s on Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year’s Eve, it is usually helpful to shoot the presence of what is going on around you and getting your environment on film before actually filming the people that are involved. Things like the food on the table or people getting decorations ready helps to set the mood for your film. This can also make editing interesting and easier.
Be tasteful when editing
In the editing process, you can use your program to really turn what you have filmed into a production by adding certain effects that would enhance your video and make it a bit more fun to watch. Maybe you can add some stills of your events in there to have a slide-show effect or include some good music to get people excited at certain points in your video. Be as creative as you want to be while editing and most importantly, try to have fun because I’m sure your audience will too when watching what you have created.
I hope these tips are helpful for you during this holiday season and on every other holiday you decide to create a home movie.
