Assemble a biography video
Biography-style family history video
is on-camera interviews of one or more family members or friends telling their
stories. Storytellers may be seen or just heard. It can include music, home
movies, newsreel movies, historic images, photographs, re-enactments, whatever
you can imagine that will interest the viewer and accurately tell the family
stories.
Step 1—Develop a project plan
Envision what
your biography video will look like. This should be done before you start
videotaping. Suggested styles:
- Hour-long
video (A&E style) of one or more storytellers
- Variety of
stories on DVD or on the web in chapters
- Various
stories and storytellers, each on a CD, inserted in a digital photo album
Step 2—Log the video
Import taped interviews into your
computer in chunks (clips). Each clip should be an unbroken segment of the
story. You can cover the splice-point of two clips with a photo overlay. Give
each clip a descriptive name. This process is called logging the video and is
followed by video capture (writing the video to your computer). Important:
follow the instructions on how to capture. log and capture
Video must be
logged on the computer in order to capture it. It will make your editing job
much easier, however, if you also create a log sheet and
use it to help you build a post-tape storyboard.
Step 3—Storyboard
Hopefully, you
made a sketchy, pre-tape storyboard :(Shooting good video basics) to
set the direction of your video project. You can now add detail to the
storyboard. I prefer to use a method where I can shuffle information. Index
cards work well for this. You can either refer to the log sheet and make brief
notes or cut up a copy of the log sheet and paste sections on index cards.
Step 4—Lay video on timeline
Follow your storyboard and lay taped
interviews and historic footage (newsreels, home video and re-enactments with
audio, etc.) on the timeline. You will then have a visual for where to overlay
images that have no audio. Insert a photo or silent home movie of Grandpa Joe
when the storyteller is talking about him, for example. You can also cover up
edit splices and bad video.
Images should be at least 2 seconds
long, most 4-6 seconds. These will be adjusted to fit the inserted music. If you don’t plan to include music, make the images all the same
length or set a repeating pattern for image duration.
1|2 Next> Biography
assembly cont,d Steps 5-8
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