Tips for editing home movies

Franko

I have a bunch of previously shot video, about 60 gigs of it, which is pretty substantial. The video is all home movies, as in no plot or characters, but just a bunch of different moments captured on tape. I plan on chopping it all up into a 30 minute highlight reel, but obviously because of the way it was shot there is no hope in making things transistion well.
So I'm seeking advice from anyone who knows any kind of tricks or tips I can use to piece together a watchable home movie (ie transitions or effects to use, what kind of shots would lead well into others and so forth).

thanky

RainyjayD3

First off, I would venture that, at least with home movies, less is more. Especially if they're older home movies, like from the VHS era.

Secondly, a lot of times people tend to throw in all the jazzy and default effects that come with video software, and in my opinion, it makes it look pretty cheesy (which might not be a bad thing, if you're going for that).

You might consider just doing a standard fade to black transition between each segment, and maybe putting the date and title of the event, (in a clear and readable font, color: white) unobtrusively in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen for the first 10 seconds at the beginning of the scene. Avoid Times New Roman, Arial, and Comic Sans. All of these fonts have been used to death and deserve some rest. For cutting out large boring segments of a single scene, maybe just do a crossfade between segments, so that it's clear it's the same event, only edited for time.

As for scene order, just do what looks best to you, and what flows well. Chronological is a good option, especially if you're doing the date and title idea.

Pretty much, just make it look classy and you'll have something that flows well and ages well.

Franko

Cool thanks, I've been playing around with adding titling to my different segments, it is all video I captured when I lived in China last year, so it is pretty recent.

Kate of Lokys

Clearly what you need to do here is edit it in the style of one of those old silent movies.

To do this, speed everything up just a little bit, make it desaturated and sepia-toned if you can, then have 5-10 seconds of action at a time interspersed with dialogue/narration screens. Toss in some dramatic piano music in the background. And since you don't have a plot, just make one up!

Ideally, it should look like this. But with more dialogue screens, because seriously, this is just lazy filmmaking - it's impossible for the audience to tell what's going on. (Aside from the fact that it's, well, Star Wars).
Silent Star Wars