Making Movies
How to make Home Movies.
DON’T.
How to make Home Movies.
DON’T.
Making home movies is generally a disaster for everyone except yourself.
Making Interesting Movies.
To make an interesting movie first of all, sit down in front of your TV with a pad and pen and watch for an hour any commercial film. Count the number of times that they zoom in or zoom out. Then check how often they pan the camera. The camera stays STILL!! Things move in front of it. Now check the transitions. Seldom do they “Shatter” the screen, sometimes they “fade out” (bedtime scenes etc.) and generally, to create tension, they go straight from one shot straight to the next with no transition.
The movie I put in here has been deleted from my channel! I don't know why or who has removed it. Den.
Example of this.
Mum is standing on the front path with baby in the pram ready to go for a walk.
Shot one; Mum and the pram take up less than half the frame centred to show the surroundings, mum smiles at the camera. You can see that she is happy and you have a good shot of the front garden.
CUT!
Shot two; reasonable close up of baby showing baby in the pram, include part of the pram, not just baby’s face. About 3 to 4 secs. Do not zoom in to this.
Shot three; bit further away as a close up of mum smiling. Again, just a short clip waist to head, 3 to 4 secs.
Shot four; Similar to shot two but a bit further away to show more of the pram.
Shot five; Similar to shot one but include the direction she is going to walk. She walks – the camera stays still so allow enough space in the frame for her to walk. Fade to the next episode.
This tells the story for what it is without it being confusing with zooms, transitions and pans.
Any still shot more than five to seven seconds becomes boring. Any movie shot more than 12 to 15 seconds is in the same category.
My wife went to New Zealand on holiday to see the grandchildren. She took the video camera, set it up on a tripod and left it running. I now have one and a half hours of a 5 year old and a 3 year old running around their yard and jumping on their trampoline on the camera tape. Now edited for keeping it has been reduced to just on 5 minutes. Just the important points.
The Garden Walk.
This is the great one for “Home Movies.” You show a clip of your favourite rose bush. You zoom in to a rose. Great but you want to see the underside also so you walk up to the bush trying not to move the camera too much. Mum yells out “How about the blue flower?” so you swing around to find the mentioned blue flower. Might as well include the big tree…!
Watching this afterwards you see that you have “Painted the garden” swinging left to right, up and down and there no intelligent continuity.
Continuity
You are filming mum going for a walk with baby in the pram. Wonderful! You notice that little John’s pedal car is on the path so you stop the camera, remove the offending item and then carry on filming. Great until you put the movie together. There on the path is a pedal car and suddenly it disappears, GONE! That sort of thing really stands out.
You are filming your wonderful flower beds along the garden paths. Everything is neat and tidy. Mum calls out “What about my geraniums?” You stop the camera whilst she puts a H U G H pot of geraniums onto the concrete slab. When the film is shown later the big pot of geraniums suddenly appears as if by magic. “Bop!”
It happens to even the best of people. When they were filming Ben Hur everything was going smooth until they developed the sequence and previewed for continuity. They then saw that one of the soldiers was wearing a watch! That caused quite a lot of consternation as the whole scene had to be shot again.
Planning.
Planning is the great answer. What is interesting to you when you are filming, example; silly shots of kids sideways and screwed up faces, may not be too exciting in a years’ time. Holiday time, bright warm sunshine, then ice and snow! There must be something in between to show that you have left the lowlands and gone up into the hills. I don’t like titles and descriptions scrolling up across my beautiful photographic masterpieces. The TV series Dr Kildare had the credits running across the screen for the whole program. To me it was a complete distraction. Movies are to tell the story. One advertising agent told me a long time ago; “If you can’t get your message across when the sound is turned off then you have missed the point.”
Well, that’s my take on making interesting movies. Watch some of the “Holiday Movies” on YouTube and I think that you will get the point.
Kind regards, Den.