Creating a Family Movie Collage With Movie Maker

It took a lot of prodding for my son to talk me into creating my first video. Shooting the video was the easy part. It took forever to learn how to edit my video clips into something interesting. I now use those skills to create fabulous family movie collages, and you can do it too. To get me started with videos, my son gave me his older digital video camera. He even took me to a political rally and left me in the middle of the crowd. I had no choice, so I made my way to the front and got some really great close-up footage of the future president of the United States.

Now I love filming local events and sharing them with the world. More importantly, I enjoy creating movie collages and sharing them with the family. Each collage you make can be as unique as the video clips you use to make it. Yours may include scenes from a forgotten special occasion or a memorable family holiday. Creating a movie collage may take hours of time and a lot of patience, but when you're done, you can copy your movie to discs and give them as gifts or save a single copy as a personal family keepsake.

What you'll need

• A digital video camera - some photo cameras have a video option.
• A USB cord to connect your camera to your computer
• A video processing program like Windows Movie Maker. I tried the newer versions, but went back to using using Movie Maker 2.6. The "Live" version is simpler, but the older version gives me more control.

Decide your theme

How about dancing? You can edit together years of clips of family members doing their thing on the dance floor and you'll have a movie that's unforgettable. Your theme can be family singing, an anthology of old school wisdom or whatever you choose.

Work with existing raw footage or create new

You may already have lots of raw footage that fits your chosen collage theme. Raw footage? That's video you shot but never edited. Or create new. Just grab your camera and get started. You don't have to film a political rally from the inside out. Just capture your kids at play or your husband fast asleep. If you go with a dancing theme, take you camera to a wedding or a party and wait for the video ops to appear.

Transfer video to your computer

You'll need to get those captured memories onto your computer.. Here's how to do it.

• Create a "video" folder on your computer desk top.
• Connect your camera to your computer with the USB cord or insert your disc.
• Your camera will show up as a removable disc drive in "My Computer."
• Click the drive to find the camera's video folder.
• You should be able to preview and select clips without opening your media player.
• Use your mouse to drag the clips you want from your camera or disc to your desktop "video" folder.
• Disconnect your camera cord.

Preview your footage in Movie Maker

• Now drag or import clips to Movie Maker one at a time.
• Your clip will show up in your Movie Maker collection.
• From there, drag it to the video time line.
• Continue this process for each clip you want to add to your collage.
• The clips will be lined up in your time line like one continuous strip of film.

Remove scenes you don't want

• If your video clips include shots of your sister's feet, or a screaming baby, you can edit those out.
• Run a preview and decide which scenes to delete
• As you reach each deletable scene, pause the action and select Split from the Clip menu.
• Split the clip before and after the part you want to remove, then delete it.
• Use your cursor or Nudge from the clip menu to ease the remaining clips together.
• You may also fill an empty space with a Transition or add in still digital images.

Add Narration or background music

• Silence the audio on your clips by clicking Audio/Mute from the Clip menu
• Add your own digital audio by dragging an audio clip to the Audio/Music section of your Video Timeline.
• You can narrate your movie using a microphone and the Narrate Timeline option from the tools menu.

Experiment with effects and transitions

If you want your video collage to be really creative, experiment with Movie Maker options. Enhance the color or add video effects such as fade-in, fade-out or blurring. Add transitions such as bars bows and fanning out. Transitions and effects add creativity to your movie and the good thing is, if you don't like what you did, you can always click undo .

Add titles to your collage

To personalize your movie, use the titles option to add dates, names, places and cute comments, or even your own production company name. Simply click video tools for the option to add titles on, before or after a selected clip.

It will take a few attempts before you get really comfortable with creating family video collages. Start simply so you won't get too frustrated. The more you do it, the better you'll get, but be warned. If you keep doing family video collages your family members might run and hide when they see you coming.

Source:

My personal video experience