Making Movies That People Actually Enjoy

We all love our home movies, and, because we're usually reliving happy times when we watch them, we're tolerant of their flaws. Before we ask anyone else to watch a home movie, though, we should improve it as much as possible so that the members of our captive audience actually enjoy the show rather than trying to hide their yawning boredom. The trick, of course, is to use good camera skills so that you avoid the most common problems: panning and zooming too fast or too slowly, jittery pictures, bad lighting, and poorly composed images. However, once you've recorded your movie, there are several ways you can improve it if you need to.

Edit your movie. Even world-famous directors and experienced camera operators don't make a perfect movie as they're filming it. That's where the movie editor comes in!

Take out the trash. Don't use any material of inferior quality. You might love a clip that brings back fond memories even though Uncle David's head is cut off, but your audience won't love it. Delete the substandard material by splitting the clip, separating the quality from the trash, and using only the best clips.

Rearrange the content. You don't have to keep all your movie's scenes in the order in which they were shot. Rearrange them based on subject matter or to produce a more logical sequence of events. Pay attention to continuitydon't jump from a glimpse of Auntie Mimi presiding over a sunny picnic to an unrelated shot of her indoors on a rainy day just because there wasn't enough footage of the picnic.

Tighten up the scenes. When you review the assembled movie and find that a scene runs too long, crop it down to prevent your audience's attention from wandering. Crop the beginning or the end of a clip by setting crop marks in the clip.

Control narrations and soundtracks. These elements can add a great deal of sophistication to a movie, but you need to insert them carefully. The sound content must be closely coordinated with the video action, and the sound quality and volume should add to rather than distract from the subject matter of the movie. If you're going to add a narration, write a script first, and rehearse it as often as you need to while you're previewing the movie. When you're sure the narration works, use a good-quality microphone to record it. Whether you're using a narration or a soundtrack, adjust the volume so that it doesn't get lost among the background sounds or blast your viewers out of their seats.

Check with the reviewers. Don't trust yourself to be objective about your movie. Before you distribute it, ask at least one person whose opinion you value to review the movie and to give you some constructive criticism. Then, if you need to, you can go back and make some tweaks to produce a movie that will leave your audience eager to watch your next extravaganza.

Know the format. In most cases your movies are saved in Windows Media Video format (.wmv), which dramatically reduces file size compared with most other video formats. If you need to use a different format, however, you do have some choices. When you publish your movie, you can choose to use the DV-AVI format that's standard to digital cameras, or the high-quality video that's used for standard television recordings. The high-quality video format can be in either the NTSC or PAL format, depending on where the movie will be played (NTSC for North and South America, Japan, and Korea; PAL for most of the rest of the world). Windows Media Video format files require Windows Media Player, so verify that whoever is going to view your video has that player installed.