Keep Your Finished Movies Short and Sweet

I keep my finished movies short, under 3 minutes and very rarely over 5 minutes. Yes, even for 2 week Florida 8-Theme Park vacations. Why am I so hung up with that 3-minute goal?

1. 3-minute movies are faster to edit and save. I am a busy, time-pressed mother, wife, project manager, entrepreneur, sister, teacher, friend, etc. I am too busy living in the moment to be spending all my time capturing the moment. If making movies is not fast, it's not sustainable. I'll end up with one Golden Globe Award movie and be so burnt out by the experience I won't do another one the rest of the year.
2. People have very short time spans. Yes, even loving, doting grandparents, aunts/uncles and cousins may not sit through long drawn out movies. It’s going to break your heart when they reach for that Fast Forward button. Keep your movies short and sweet. It's a sin to bore people. When your movie is over, you want them begging for more, not be relieved it’s fiiiiinally over.
3. Do you want to share your movies on the web or by email? Long movies take long to upload and eat up bandwidth. Don't make your viewers wait. Keep your movies 3 minutes or under.

But, you say, we spent 10 days in a Florida 8-Theme Park vacation. How do we shrink all that footage into a 3 minute movie? You can do it. Here are some suggestions:

• Trim, trim, trim and trim some more. Keep your movie fast-paced. It’s a movie. It’s not a documentary or a journal. Keep the story tight and powerful. Take out anything and everything that drags the pace. For example, instead of showing your kids getting on the roller coaster ride, buckling up, then following the roller coaster ride, just show the roller coaster ride barrelling down with kids screaming at the top of the lungs, then quickly snap to the most exciting part of the next ride and the next ride. Ten years from now when you watch the video, you will enjoy that variety and pace much more.
• Less video and more pictures. A series of 10 pictures takes about 30 seconds (3 seconds a picture). That series of 10 snapshots may cover more story than a 30 second video clip. I use this technique a lot. Sometimes, the last third of my movie is just still pictures, strung together elegantly with cool pans, zooms, transitions and exciting soundtrack of course. Click Play below for example.
• Minimize venue scenes. You may be awed by the Eiffel Tower in your Paris trip, but that Eiffel Tower is not going anywhere and shouldn’t take up 30 seconds in your movie as you video taped it from all angles. Capture people, capture expressions, capture moods, don’t waste precious movie time capturing buildings or monuments. A 3-second picture to set the context should suffice.
• Get a scrapbook or a journal. Yes, go to A.C. Moore or any art store and get a scrapbook where you can put all those pictures that didn’t make it into your video. There are other ways of cherishing precious memories other than home movies. Spread it out. Don't stuff it all into your home movies.