The art of making a short holiday film 3

(The secret of pleasing your audience)

Earlier parts of this series can be found here: Part 1, Part 2.

Short films make for happy audiences

Better that your audience says “Have you any more” than “Is that the time….. We must be leaving”.

Audiences for your holiday films fall into 2 categories:

Category 1 viewers will accept almost anything, warts and all. They are the least critical of audiences and accept anything that moves. I know this because people tell me “I must include this because ‘they’ expect/want to see everything”. I have even heard wedding video makers say this.

Category 2 viewers on the other hand are discerning people who hope (note the choice of words, hope not expect) to be entertained.

I will let you into a well-kept secret that you really already know.

Category 1 viewers don’t exist they are just being polite. Think of your reaction when people you know who make no attempt at editing their films say the dreaded words

“Let me show you our holiday video”.

Why edit?

There is no way that you are going to inflict the raw tapes of your holiday onto your audience, is there?

I have suffered people fast winding through their mostly tedious, badly filmed material to reach the “You must see this…” bit.

I suggest people edit films for the following reasons:

1. To remove filming mistakes. Feet shots; inside camera bag shots; bad exposure shots etc.
2. To reduce the length to watchable proportions.
3. To tart up the film with music and titles.

For most people this is enough but not if you want to please and entertain you audience.

You might even get the sort after accolade “Have you any more films?”

Let me explain.

My editing Philosophy

When I started still photography an experienced enthusiast said to me:

“If you want to see how good a photographer is, look at his waste bin.”

I have taken this philosophy with me into filmmaking.

I reject much more than I use.

With group projects our shooting ratio for our short films is often in excess of 20:1 (20 minutes of tape give 1 minutes of finished footage). For our 1-minute films this is often in excess of 60:1.

How does this relate to my holiday filming?

On our New Zealand trip I took 10 tapes and Jennifer hundreds of photos. We have ended with less than 90 minutes worth of finished film.

Profligate, sloppy technique, incompetence…NO.

I just think my audience deserves only the best. Not for me the “Fast forward” to the “best” scenes.

So faced with this pile of unedited film how do you get started?

My editing technique

Capture all footage to disk

When I started in computing a 10-megabyte disk drive cost in excess of £1,000.

Today you can get 1 Terabyte (1,000,000 MB) for around £500.

Disk space is cheap so why not have the convenience of capturing all of you footage for immediate and easy access.

Most modern computer based editing programs have there own so-called “capture” programs.

For maximum flexibility I use the program Scenalyzer to do this somewhat tedious task for me.

A free trial of this software can be found here:- http://scenalyzer.com/main.html

This not only transfers the video to disk but will cut it into scenes for ease of use. It’s easy to use for us average people but has enough flexibility and control to satisfy the most ardent “Techie”.

It even has the ability to control the camera for stop-motion sequences.

This method of working not only provide quick access to your footage it also preserves the valuable original tapes.

With the coming of hard-disk or flash memory cameras this process will be unnecessary.

Point to ponder

Every time you play your tapes through your camera it wears the surface and degrades the image because it is in physical contact with the recording/playback heads.

I capture all footage to tape before being tempted to have a “quick glance” via the camera. This helps achieve the highest quality possible.

Planning

Hey, hold on I hear you say, you’ve done planning in the first article. True but this is a different type of planning. It’s organisational planning.

If you allow the software to determine where your files are placed you have no control of, and will eventually loose track of your film clips. Therefore take control.

Although I have 6 disk drives the minimum you need is 2. Let me explain.

You need to capture clips to one drive and render out to a second one. Why? The read/write heads of a computer have to travel to read and write data so each computer. If you try to capture and render to one drive there will be a conflict of priorities. The end result could be “dropped frames”. This results in the appearance of a stuttering picture. Highly undesirable. So to overcome this you need to have a minimum of 2 drives. The more drives you have the easier it is to spread the load and maintain seamless input/output giving smooth playing videos.

Which drive for captured clips and which for output ones? The unedited clips will take more space than the edited output therefore place the input clips on the largest disk.

Quite logical really.

Point to ponder

It is a well kept secret that Windows XP pro has the ability to treat all installed disks as 1 gigantic disk. I wonder why?

Editing software

Editing software is really a matter of choice.

If you use a MAC you have a good but limited selection. On the other hand the variety under Windows varies from simple low-end software to the over complex “techie” software. Somewhere between these extremes you will find a package that suits you.

My package of choice is Ulead (now Corel) Media Studio Pro 8. Alas the new owners may not continue support for this software.

Whatever software you use really doesn’t matter. What is important is that you get to know the capabilities and limitations of your chosen program. Above all make a choice and stick to it.

Editing software has a steep learning curve and it may take months to get to grips with its potential. It is a tool and like any tool requires practise to get the best out of it. Software doesn’t make great films, only skill and knowledge and perhaps a little talent produces pleasing results.

No edit program will satisfactorily cover all aspects of film production. Like any artist you need a variety of tools.

In the next part of this series I will discuss some of the tools available to the filmmaker.

Jeff Friend