We all have them…

Those short 5-60 second clips on our phones or cameras of total randomness recorded in our life.

But what do you do with those?

The typical life of those small clips involves getting buried in a phone, or if its lucky it gets downloaded to another storage area. Maybe some even make it online to share some good laughs or admiration.

But even still, the small snippets often have no context or final home in which to reside.

Buzzy LOVES to be filmed. If I start filming him doing an activity, he asks me to film clip after clip as he excitedly does something different. But what do I do with 10 clips of him playing with his new marble game?

Make a music video 🙂

I love this approach to photo and video. I can snag the best parts of these clips and merge them together into a more coherent story. Add some music for a bit of entertainment and you have suddenly created a little vignette of happiness.

3 Tips for Video Montages

1. The shorter the clip, typically the more interesting.
You may think a whole unedited 60 second clip of your child is purely delightful, but if you want other people to be entertained, you’ll need to shorten things up. Cut things out and only show the best parts.

2. Shoot video from different angles.
You can show the same thing in several ways and still maintain a good sense of interest in your footage. When everything is shot from the same perspective you have much less material to work with.

3. Look for a beginning and and end to your “story”.
It’s best if you think about this ahead of time while filming, but even later in the editing process you can often find footage that works well to start or end the video story.

*All video filmed on my Nikon D7000 SLR with 50mm 1.4 lens and 24mm 2.0 lens. Handheld.
*Video Edited in Camtasia for Mac.

What do you do with your video clips?

biopic2 Brooke Snow is the Professional Photographer for her own family and an Abundant Life Practitioner. She loves tree swings, the month of May, and early morning walks. She lives with her calm husband and adventurous son in Northern Utah. Join her FREE Photo Perspective Photography course for great instruction on easy ways to immediately improve your photos.

2 Responses

  1. Quick question… I love doing videos, but was wondering if you could share some places where you can find free music that is safe to use–as in, not violating copyright laws. I’m not super picky when I’m just making videos for my own family to watch, but if you want to post something online to share, such as on YouTube, I don’t want to be using music I’m not supposed to. Thanks!

    1. Great question Jocelyn! I usually use http://www.joshwoodward.com. He has a ton of songs that are creative commons and I like the instrumental tracks of his songs so I can use music that still has a mood but the vocals aren’t a distraction. (Though he has some fun vocals you could use too.) Hope that helps!

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