Making A Movie Together
As you saw in the video, making a movie together can be a great bonding experience. You can teach many things throughout this experience. Since this may be a new experience to some of you, we thought a refresher in what Alex and Stephen shared may be useful as you embark to make movie magic with your family.
- Start with prayer and devote this time to the Lord
- Come up with the story
- Decide what your movie is about and the themes. Where does your movie take place? Modern day or Bible times? How many characters do you have? What is the central theme of your movie?
- Grab a sheet of paper or your computer and write out a basic script.
- Decide on how you will do set design. Let the artist in the family design the backgrounds for your movie. These can be as simple as cards you hold up before each scene that says where the scene takes place to backgrounds you design and draw on paper to actually building a set.
- Shooting your movie
- Decide on a camera. You can do this the inexpensive way by using the video function on your digital camera or you can buy a camcorder specifically for this purpose. Consult an electronics store to see which may be the best fit for you.
- Audio is important, try to use an external microphone if possible and get as close to the action as you can to capture the best audio possible.
- If you feel adventuresome, you can use green screen technology in your video editing software to make some great scenes. You can purchase some green fleece at a fabric store to use as a background and drop in the real background in your software.
- Tripods can be really helpful in getting good shots without moving the camera.
- Lighting is important. The best light to shoot in is outdoor light. For indoor shots, the light should not be coming from above and you should bounce the light you have off foam board to diffuse it across your entire subject.
- Editing Your Movie
- The first step is to figure out which editing software you will be using for your project.
- Free editing software
- Windows Movie Maker
- Free Studio - also acts as an AVI converter
- Apple iMovie
- Low cost editing software
- Professional grade editing software
- The next step is to connect your camera to your computer to download your scenes. This is usually done through a USB connection, but you can see the manual for your camera for details.
- Once you have your data into your editing software, you can begin editing. This is a very time consuming process, but one in which you can model patience, flexibility and follow through for your kids. Whatever program you are using should have a tutorial on how edit a project.
- Sharing your movie with others
- Once you are done editing, you can share your move with your family as the precursor to a family movie night or you can share with others online.
- No matter how you chose to screen your family movie masterpiece, you will have spent quality time together and hopefully had fun in the process!