Home movie madness
Create a one-of-a-kind memento of happy holidays
By Leah Macpherson
The feast is finished, the decorations have been packed away, and holiday houseguests have headed home. Use the post-celebration lull to create a holiday home movie easily shared with far-flung friends and family.
User-friendly tech tools, such as Windows Movie Maker, let you combine movie footage, funky music, silly title screens and digital photos to produce movies that commemorate each celebration. Luckily, you don’t have to spend hours in an editing suite to get a fabulous product. With a few tips from the pros and the right tools, you can unleash your inner Spielberg.
Before you begin your video
Robert Murphy, president of Full Motion Graphics, has been making movies for decades. He suggests following these tips before you begin work on your holiday classic.
- Consider what kind of movie you’d like to make and who will watch it. “Do you have a bunch of holiday videos and stills you’ve shot that you’d like to string together, or are you going to tell a story about your kid’s first Christmas?”
- Find a hook on which to build the video, i.e., a main theme you can centre it on. For example, maybe it’s all about opening gifts or a montage of decorating the tree.
- Music can help draw things together and suggest a rhythmic pace.
- If you have a scanner, consider having the kids make drawings or create titles for different sections.
Get organized
After you’ve created a vision for what you’d like to do, but before you sit down at your PC, organize your materials and thoughts.
Murphy says that some video-making neophytes find that making a paper edit — a list of the elements you have and the order in which you’d like them to appear — is a helpful starting point. Creating a paper edit is a great way to map out the flow and content of the video. Of course, nothing is written in stone here, he adds, because things can be manipulated easily in the digital world.
Make a movie masterpiece
The production process will be slightly different for everyone, depending on the materials and editing software people plan to use. However, Murphy offers these general guidelines for movie production.
- Organize the clips, photos and scans into a narrative using your video-editing software. Try to create a logical flow: is the movie a sequential narrative that tells the story or a series of fun vignettes?
- Get creative! You can use the audio output from the camera, add background music or combine the two. Imagine video footage of the kids describing what they think is in each prettily wrapped gift while “Winter Wonderland” plays in the background.
- Apply any effects, transitions or titles to make things flow nicely. Title screens can help create a smooth flow for the movie and explain where the action takes place (for example, “Brunch at Grandma’s House in Goose Bay”).
Kaerynne Nakamura has been putting together family movies since her first child was born. “During family celebrations, I take tons of photos and video footage. After I’ve made a movie, I use my video-editing software to compress it to send via e-mail or post it online. These days, video sharing is really easy.”
Nakamura offers these tips for taking your family film from fun to fantastic.
- A star is born. Manufacture a little fun during the school break. Why not recreate a scene from a famous holiday movie? The kids can star in a new holiday martial arts classic: Crouching Reindeer, Hidden Elf. And wouldn’t Dad be ideal as The Grinch Who Stole Christmas?
- The way we were. Each year, Nakamura creates a small time capsule within her holiday movie that highlights her kids’ ages, grades and interests for friends and family who can’t be with them over the holidays. Each child also sends out a special holiday wish to loved ones.
- Holiday high jinks. At the end of each movie, Nakamura tags on a short bloopers section that documents all of the weird and wonderful moments of the season. Capture the time the dog dragged the turkey off the table and the time Mom tripped on a gift and knocked over the tree!
Once you’ve completed your holiday cinematic masterpiece, all you have to do is make the popcorn, sit back and enjoy the show.
