One of the most important things I do in my job is editing. When people first think about sharing their life story, they are overwhelmed with the volumes of information to relate and tell. My job is to help them focus, record, and produce a clear, concise, and entertaining story.
One of the hardest things to do is edit your own family footage. In your eyes, everything that was filmed feels like it has great significance and significance. But a larger audience may not feel the same. This is why you MUST edit your footage if you plan on letting others sit and watch it for an extended period of time. You must get to the heart of the story and remove all non-essential details.
While there is a lot of skill involved in co-editing an amazing movie, for the average person, it doesn’t take great skill to make something entertaining and worth watching. Think of editing a movie as similar to editing a term paper using your computer’s word processing program. You have many ideas. You just need to remove the ones that don’t add up to your thesis and move the ones that do until they make sense and flow together.
And just like you need to find the right word processing software to edit your final work, you’ll need to find the right movie editing software that works best for your computer and skill level.
There are many types of editing software for Mac and PC at different prices. This article shares the top 5 programs for beginners and advanced alike. It’s a great summary of the best there is and I totally agree with your recommendations. http://lifehacker.com/5165944/six-best-video-editing-apps
Once you’ve chosen your software, the first step in editing your movie is to CAPTURE all the footage you’ve shot and save it to your computer.
• If you shot on a removable drive, you can connect it to your computer and find all the clips you shot ready for editing right away.
• If you shot on digital tape, you’ll need to “digitize” your footage by connecting your camera to your computer via USB or Firewire, and then use editing software to convert the footage into files that the software can read.
• If you shot on a DVD, you’ll need to use software that splits the DVD into clips that can be used with editing software. (I like MPEG Streamclip, for Mac or PC. It works well and it’s free! http://www.squared5.com/ )
Once you’ve captured your footage, you’ll want to organize it into clips and bins that go with a theme or story, depending on how you decide to organize it.
Once you’ve arranged your clips, you’ll place them on your software’s timeline and start rearranging them to create your story. This is where you’ll want to cut out all those extra bits that aren’t necessary, like the many “umms” and “ahhs” from the speakers, or the footage where you forgot to turn off the record button while you were recording. montage, or the footage from last year’s Halloween party that was on the tape but isn’t relevant to the story they’re editing together about the family reunion. (You understand my point.)
What will ultimately “connect the dots” and get your story flowing is using Sectional Shots. A simple example is using photos or other non-interview images to cover interview cut-offs. (When you edit someone’s interview and cut it into smaller parts, it will end up as a series of “jump cuts.” Cut takes or B-Rolls cover these jump cuts.) The best cuts are those that are relevant to the story. and enhance its meaning.
Regardless of how you manage to edit your footage, the key is to turn it into something that is shorter and even more meaningful than the original footage you shot. Your audience will thank you more than you will ever know!