When families think of making home movies, they think of one style of movie chronichling an event from start to finish. I like to think there are 3 types of home movies:

• Video stories
• Video vignettes
• Photoshows

What’s a Video Story?

A video story is a 3 to 5-minute video that covers a significant event in your family life, the "major event" of the year. Examples are graduations, family trip to Hawaii, a retirement party and big holiday events. A video story is a well-choreographed sequence with a beginning, middle and end. I like to include more details, close-up interviews, more contemplative scenes, etc. Aim to do 1 video story a year.

What’s a Video Vignette?

A video vignette is about 1-3 minutes long. Vignettes are not stories with beginning, middle, and end. They capture small moments of our lives. It’s the little everyday things that usually just pass by and are remembered no more yet they are the little things that make your lives rich and precious. Examples are a child’s first attempt at riding a bike, house renovation, junior’s first haircut, a swim meet, Grandma teaching your daughter how to knit, etc. Aim to do 2 video vignettes a year.

And a photoshow, what’s that?

A photoshow is a lot of fun and easy, easy to make with the right software. A photoshow is a bunch of photos strung together into a movie-like video with music, captions, transitions and special effects. They take minutes to do and bring back the memory to life just as powerfully. If you have not created a photo show before, there is a link at the end of this article to a video tutorial on how to create photo shows in minutes. The software is even free if you are a Comcast Internet subscribier.

There are several reasons why you want your collection to have a variety of video stories, vignettes and photoshows: vignettes and photoshows are a lot quicker to do if you are time-pressed, a variety of short and longer videos keep the audience excited, and finally, the variety stimulates your creativity instead of getting stuck on one style.

Another piece of advice I also always give to families wanting to start video editing: Keep Finished Movies Short & Sweet

Useful related articles:

How to Share your Videos on the Web

To keep my finished movie fast-moving and exciting, the first thing I do is to trim out the slow, boring parts from the raw footage during the [tag-tec]video editing[/tag-tec] process. But I save the nuggets of interviews I often shoot as part of the event even though these ‘interviews’ are not what you would call fast-paced. The [tag-tec]video interviews[/tag-tec] could be a kid telling the camera what she is looking forward to at the beach, or it could be someone sharing all the warm wishes he has for a new graduate, or it could be my grandmother explaining how her grandfather escaped with his art collection from China.

Ten years from now, when you watch the finished movie, the interviews are like little jewels of flashback into a time, a sentiment that has long been forgotten.

A professional TV interviewer has very sophisticated gear set up such as lighting, lavaliere microphone (that little cockroach you see perched on collars or lapels), and headsets. Myself? If you put a pause on a magic moment to set all that up, my little guy may have run away, or the graduation party may [Read more...]

‘Tis the time of reckoning. As doting parents not willing to let one memory slip by uncaptured, we have been videotaping every event from the first hospital oohs and aahs to the first baby steps to their first recital to their school graduations.

And now we have stacks of videotapes stuffed in the safety of our cool, dark closets. Safety? Not. Video tapes have a shelf life.

When Barbara Streisand sang: "Misty, water-colored memories, of the way we were." she might as well have been referring to the thousands of videotapes of old home movies that are stuck in people's closets, slowly fading as they wait for someone to pull them out and copy them to digital media.

Don’t wait any longer. When you transfer those water-colored memories into digital media, you get these benefits:

1. Stop the degradation. Magnetic media starts degrading as early as 3 years.
2. Digital files can be edited with video-editing software and turned into movies with nifty transitions, special effects, soundtrack, and captions.
3. Digital files can be shared with friends and family via DVD, the internet, iPod, email, etc.

So is it easy to transfer video tapes to a digital form?

Today, it is. To learn about the different options available, click here.

Whatever you do, don't do nothing. Otherwise, everyday you wait, your tapes degrade. One day, they will completely fade away, which was almost what happened to the video below. Degraded "Misty, water-colored memories" where it gets difficult even to make out the faces – is not always what you want.